


Blood on Porcelain

by BIFF1



Series: Arkanis Sheriff's Department [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Deputy!First order, Deputy!Phasma, Flashbacks, Hux's Tragic Past, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, Millicent the cat - Freeform, Missing Persons, Murder Mystery, POV Alternating, Past Child Abuse, Slow Burn, Violence, actual psychic!Kylo, deputy!Hux, deputy!au, pop culture references, small town government corruption, somewhat graphic talk of a dead boy, sort of thriller?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 12:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7052305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BIFF1/pseuds/BIFF1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deputy Hux thought that by moving to Arkanis he would be on the fast track to becoming sheriff. He had no idea that when he transferred he was about to face his demons in the form of a murdered local boy and Sheriff Snoke's pet 'psychic' Kylo Ren.</p><p>Kylo Ren has been in Arkanis for over a decade now, enjoying the privilege of being about to use his powers without fear of a mob forming. However there has been a disturbance in the force and he's pretty sure it's the hot redhead he's been charged with distracting from a murder investigation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Familiar Death

**Author's Note:**

> tw: past child abuse and pretty much everyone has a tragic past in this.

 

  


The blood is pooling around the coroner's knees, he can see it seep into the grey pants and the air around him shifts and shimmers, the humidity of the summer air freezing in his lungs. Everything feels suddenly so much like the ice cold air of The Academy. The pale dark haired boy laying lifeless on the pale tile of the bathroom reminding him too strongly of another boy.

  


_The grey and white of his uniform is stained red, at the knees, chest and cuffs._

  


_He didn't know if the stains would come out. He would be reprimanded for the wanton destruction of his uniform._

  


_He sat in a chair outside of his father's office staring at the stains on his palms, under his nails, that had worked their way into the threads._

  


_Sul's mother sat opposite him and he couldn't believe the distaste of having her there across from him when he was still wearing Sul's blood across his body like this._

  


_"You're Hux aren't you?" The woman asks softly from across the small hall, "I can tell," she continues with a shaking voice when he looks at her confused, "Sul spoke about you a lot,in his letters." She does something that horrifies him._

  


_She stands up and sits next to him. She smiles sadly and its Sul's smile and he can feel the heavy thick feeling of tears trying to push through. Sul's mother runs a shaking hand through his messy hair, pushing the strands back away from his forehead and a embarrassing shuttering wheeze of sound escapes his mouth._

  


_Sul used to do that._

  


_He’d never do it again. He would never do anything again._

  


_Sullivan Vanderin would never leave new marks on the world, he would be forever immortalized in the letters and emails and voicemails hidden away in Hux’s computer, in the phone his father had confiscated and in a box under a loose floorboard under his bunk._

  


_"It's alright Hux... They said he didn't feel anything. Just a warmth and then... Then..."_

  


_"Nothing." He finishes for her. He can't bring himself to tell her it wasn't true. That he had laid on the ground broken beyond repair and stared up at him with wet eyes, pleading with a mouth full of blood that aimed to choke him._

  


“Is everything alright deputy?”

  


Hux blinks hard a few times and tries to shake away Sullivan Vanderin.

  


“You’re first body?” The other deputy asks. Hux thinks his name is Mitaka but there’s a smudge on his name badge so he can’t be sure. He’s a short, slight, pale man who looks more inclined to paperwork then something like this.

  


This is gruesome he knows that it is, the boy broken and blood smeared across tiles and mirrors, but he finds it hard to even appear to be affected like he knows he should.

  


He’s new to this town, he doesn’t know this kid and while the blood, dark and pooling against white tile reminds him of someone else, a boy long dead there is nothing else about this boy to liken to Sul.

  


Sul had been all sharp edges and dark hair and sparkling dark eyes. This boy is soft, the kind of soft that his father would stand for.

  


“No.” He answers simply.

  


Mitaka nods slowly like he expects to hear more. When Hux doesn’t continue he doesn’t ask and he decides that he likes the man. As much as Hux liked anyone anyway. The man was tidy and had sharp eyes and has taken out a little paper notebook from his pocket and is scribbling away in it.

  


Hux hadn’t felt a lot of things since that ice cold winter day fifteen years ago but if he is capable of friendship he decides that he will allow it for Mitaka. Hux walks away from the man, his back straight, trying not to favor his left side and rounds the room. Sure he’s decided that he will allow a friendship to culminate but he sure as hell wasn’t going to do any work for it.

  


The last friend he had had died.

  


In his arms.

  


Painfully.

  


_He had tried to make it painless. He had tried. He really had. He just, he had planned on a lot of variables but he hadn't planned on Sul not taking his medication that morning. He had slipped painkillers in. But he hadn't... He had forgotten... He had slept late...Sleeping late had never stopped Sul from taking his meds before but this time..._

  


The boy was holding a piece of paper tightly in one bloody hand. Hux crouches down careful not to get close enough to the puddle and get blood on his freshly cleaned uniform. Pulling gloves out of his back pocket he carefully frees the note.

  


‘Together in eternity’ was all it said in calm careful blue ink. It feels way too familiar. It reminds him of something that he can't quite put his finger on yet.

  


_"He loved you very much Hux." She whispers because she knows its a secret and he crumbles. The shock and detachment he had worked so hard on escaping him._

  


_He knew._

  


_He knew that Sul loved him._

  


_But he didn't know if Sul had known it was mutual._

  


_The words ‘I love you too’ hadn’t had a chance to leave his mouth before the light had gone out in Sul’s eyes leaving them dull._

  


_He was a one of the commandant's cadets now but what did that even mean. What he had given up to achieve something that no one could really know about._

  


_"I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry." He tells Sul's mother and tries to push down the pain, to solidify it into something he could use. Into determination or strength._

  


_He didn't think this sorrow would turn into anything useful. The other cadets had told him glory stories of their kills, of the intricate lies, and close calls, of the boys they had felled that had meant nothing to them but a ticket in. Boys they hardly even knew._

  


_He had known everything about Sul, knew the touch of his skin, the feel of breath and chapped lips, he knew how he liked his toast, what his favourite color was, knew his favourite song, what line of poetry he thought was magical. He knew the grip of his fingers on his, hidden under too long sleeves._

  


_"It's not your fault Hux." She tells him and he let's her pull him into a tight hug because he doesn't know what else he can give her._

  


It had been his fault, the fault of his young mind being molded by his father. Just as much as this was the fault of an abusive father. He could recognize the marks all over the scene. The lack of defensive wounds on the boy's hands and with gloved fingers he lifted the hem of the boys shirt to see the yellowing bruises of an older beating.

  


“Bring this boy’s father in for questioning.” Hux growls looking up and the other officers seem to be frozen, “What?”

  


“His father?” Mitaka asks stepping forward a tight grip on his notebook.

  


“Yes.”

  


“His father... the mayor…”

  


If they expected Hux to change his mind they were going to be disappointed.

  


“Yes.” His voice is a snap of sound and Mitaka rushes away, knocking over a trash can in his hurry.

  


-

  


When he arrives back at the station to question the mayor he knows his promising police career is over.

  


Sheriff Snoke is standing in the doorway of his office his pitch black gaze digging into him. He curls one long boney finger towards himself. Hux doesn't need to look around to know that the come here is for him.

  


Hux had transferred here to this small town in the middle of fucking nowhere because he wanted advancement. Rumour had it that Snoke was near death and that none of the possible replacements were as qualified as he was. It was easy. Well it would have been easy.

  


Rumor has it that Snoke is immortal, well whatever he's doing to stay alive sure hasn't stopped the aging process.

  


He sits down in a seat across from Snoke’s desk and he notices that the chair is shorter than it should be. He'd be impressed with the tactic if it wasn't being used on him.

  


Snoke closes the door tightly before moving, almost gliding across the floor to sit tall across from him. The old man is bald and looks like he's fought off every possible sickness with his clawlike hands. He doesn't look strong but he does look powerful.

  


The man tents his fingers for a moment, glaring down at him. It's as if he can look right into his mind. It's unsettling but Hux squares his shoulders as best as he can in the cramped chair, jaw set and runs through a mental list of facts about the crime.

  


"Mitaka informed me that you wish to question the mayor about the death of his son. As a suspect."

  


"The boy had clearly been beaten with some regularity-"

  


"He wasn't very popular at school. Perhaps a bully-"

  


"A bully... That wasn't a schoolyard beating, sir. I'm sure that the coroner will back me up."

  


"I am sure he won't." There was something in his voice as he said that that stung. It was flat, too flat.

  


Hux ran though the facts of the case in his mind again, listing the details of the crime scene over to himself. It was obvious to him that the note the boy had clung to was a red herring, most likely written by the father to lure him into that bathroom. He knew with a cold detachment exactly what had happened to the boy. Could feel it in his bones, a strange almost vibration in his soul.

  


_Hux stood in the unused fifth floor bathroom, holding in his hand a piece of paper ripped from Sul's stupid power rangers notebook. He held it close to his chest and waited._

  


_Why Sul wanted to meet him here when they were so much safer in their dorm he didn't know._

  


_He didn't care. Sul made him reckless. This was what love was wasn't it. This was what they talked about in those movies and those trashy novels._

  


_Brendol Hux junior was consumed, he had never felt so many things at once or maybe even ever._

  


_He practically vibrated as his normally ordered and strict mind whirled in chaos trying to think of what Sul had to say to him._

  


_A declaration of love? Of intent? They were only fourteen but if it was with Sul he couldn't imagine anything that wouldn't be right._

  


_The door of the bathroom opened and he turned, face flushed with possibilities._

  


_"Commandant..." His face drains of color. His body runs ice cold. He looks down at the note and suddenly isn't so sure if that's Sul's handwriting or just a good facsimile._

  


_"Junior." His father stands to his full height, still towering over him in his sharp uniform he can't remember his father's voice ever being as cold as it is now._

  


_"Sir." Hux snaps to attention, chin high and proud, his shoulders squared and back straight. He closes his eyes tightly when he hears the buttons of his father's jacket come free. He sneaks a look to watch his father roll his sleeves up._

  


_Hux squeezes his eyes tighter when a heavy hand falls onto his shoulder. He knows what's coming._

  


_The punch to his kidney forces the air out of his lungs and threatens to topple him._

  


_"Tell me about your roommate Junior." His father asks and he is afraid to say anything at all as the next blow lands almost exactly in the same place as the first._

  


_The beating went on for, he didn't even know how long, until he couldn't see properly and everything tasted of blood and death._

  


_Every breath burned in his lungs as his father pulled back to stand towering over him._

  


_"Tell me about your room mate Junior."_

  


_"He's nothing." The words burst out with blood and spit on the white tile between them, "He's nothing."_

  


_"Then prove it." His father had told him before grabbing his jacket and leaving the room._

  
  
  


Hux's fists tighten against his legs as he thinks back to the beating. He was positive that Francis had met the same fate. Nowhere in his mind did he think he and his father, or his schooling and upbringing were normal. They were not likely to be mimicked anywhere but he could see it here.

  


The fact that it had taken place in a public bathroom only brought the similarities closer to home.

  


"I know he's guilty and unless there is mounting evidence that suggests otherwise I believe we should pursue him as our main suspect in Francis' murder." Hux tells his superior in even controlled tones.

  


He doesn't miss that cruel looking smile he's trying to hide behind his hands however.

  


"For your own sake and that of your career here I have taken you off this case."

  


"What?"

  


Hux has never gone in for histrionics but every bone in his body ached to jump out of this stupid chair and slam his fists down onto the desk. He just holds his posture straight and maintains eye contact.

  


If this was his last station the sheriff would have faltered and given in to the intense gaze Hux had cultivated over the years but Snoke seems to be amused at the attempt at silent dominance.

  


"You will be working a small missing persons case with Kylo."

  


"Even though my skills would be better suited to the homicide." It's not a question. He knows that Snoke is making a power play pulling him off the case and putting him on a runaway chase.

  


Snoke unfolds his hands and leans back in his chair, "I like you Hux. You're new here, the missing person case will help you to understand what kind of town we are." He waves one of his pale hands and he's dismissed.

  


Hux closes the door behind him thinking he's already pretty fucking sure what kind of corrupt piece of shit town this is.

  


Mitaka is sitting nervously in the chair next to Hux's immaculate desk. The smaller man is wringing his notebook in his hands. He looks like he'll shake apart.

  


With a sigh he sits down at his desk and actively doesn't look at Mitaka as he types his notes on the Francis Fallen case that he wouldn't be working on.

  


To his credit Mitaka only freaks out marginally more while waiting for Hux to acknowledge him.

  


He doesn't look away from his monitor when he finally addresses Mitaka, "Who is Ren?"

  


"Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I had no idea he'd send you to Ren. I thought he'd just talk to you or, or-"

  


Hux looks at the man, he's white as a sheet, eyes wide with something akin to terror.

  


"Who is Ren?" He asks again putting a hand to Mitaka's cheek and turning him to look at him. His skin is ice cold until a wave of blood rushes to the man's face to heat and color it. Mitaka is looking wide eyed at Hux. The terror has abated leaving something much more manageable.

  


Hux knows what admiration looks like and Deputy Mitaka is textbook. Hux lets his hand slide away from smooth closely shaved skin and tries again.

  


"Who is Ren?" His voice is less sharp, he knows when to use a carrot and when to use a stick to get what he wants and Mitaka is obviously starving.

  


"Kylo Ren... he's the town psychic... psycho more like." the last part is said so softly it’s as if he's afraid this Ren character will hear him even though they are alone in the station save for a very tall blonde woman cleaning her gun and Snoke locked away in his office, "He's Snoke's favourite punishment. No one likes working with him. He's volatile."

  


The way Mitaka clears his throat and shifts in his seat screams that there is more to say but he he biting his lip and staring down at his shoes.

  


"I have to go... Phasma and I are supposed to be meeting De

  


Hux watches as he and the blonde woman, Phasma, make their way slowly out of the station.

  


The woman is so tall that when she turns to throw a smug grin at him, she does so over Mitaka's head. He decides that he doesn't like her. Hux liked people that were easily readable and easy to control. It made everything so much easier and cleaner. Mitaka had proven malleable but this woman... He doubted he could get her to bend to his will quiet as easily.

  


A soft bing from his computer pulls him from his thoughts. It's an email from Snoke. The details of the missing persons case. A Glenn Curtis has been missing for eight days and attached to that the address where he's supposed to meet his new partner.

  


A quick Google search shows nothing but forest where the address should be.

  


Delightful.

 


	2. The force whispers his name

  
  


Kylo knows entirely too much about the red head walking up to him then he'd like to. All without reading a file or even hearing the man's voice.

  
  


In spite of the small hike he would have taken to meet Kylo at the old Fontane place the man is still in perfect order, the only sign of any sort of exertion two patches of pale pink high on his cheeks.

  
  


He keeps correcting his movements, falling into a comfortable stride favouring one side before remembering himself and trying to fix it.

  
  


He's stubborn and strict and when he looks up and locks eyes with Ren something cold passes through him. He has the eyes of a killer, but God if they aren't the most beautiful he's ever seen.

  
  


"You're Mr. Ren." It's not a question, more a statement that he's trying to come to terms with.

  
  


The man looks like his mind should be neat and tidy, all locked doors and labeled boxes but the man is a maelstrom.

  
  


It's almost as intoxicating as it is annoying.

  
  


"What did you do to get stuck on missing persons with me?" He asks instead of asking for a name. He doesn't want to put a name to this man, it feels like naming a tropical storm, like he'd be acknowledging that the man could do him damage.

  
  


"My job." Is all the man says coming to a stop in front of the dilapidated building. The man pulls a little notebook out of his breast pocket and starts flicking through pages.

  
  


Kylo stands next to him and pretends not to be looking at the pages. There are small pen drawings of the town smattered across the tiny cramped notes.

  
  


They aren't gallery good or anything but they look an awful lot better than the little stick people Mitaka draws in his.

  
  


"This is the Fontane place then?"

  
  


"Yeah, this is the last place Glenn was seen."

  
  


"Did you know him?"

  
  


The man pulls blue gloves out of a small compartment on his belt and stretches them over his long pale fingers while he waits for a response.

  
  


"It's a small town," he pauses trying to think of the best way to say what he wants to but, to describe the weird half knowledge that came from small towns, the man misinterprets the silence.

  
  


"Hux."

  
  


"What?"

  
  


"My name."

  
  


Hurricane Hux

  
  


He had always liked alliteration.

  
  


"That you're first name deputy?" He can't help but ask. Hux is a terrible first name. Huxley maybe? Huxington? Doubtful.

  
  


"No." Hux moves away from him but instead of climbing the crumbling steps into the small house he makes to round it.

  
  


Kylo follows behind him at a distance he says is to be professional but is mostly so he can check out Hux's ass as he bends in the overgrown weeds every time he finds some trash.

  
  


"Tell me about Glenn."

  
  


Kylo shrugs even though Hux isn't watching, "He's just a kid."

  
  


"Did he know Francis Fallen?" He asks and he can tell in the overly even tone he's using that he actually cares about this answer.

  
  


"Everyone did. He was the mayor's son. What does that have to do with Glenn's disappearance?"

  
  


Hux leans down low and picks something up, examines it, makes a note of it in his little book, before turning back to look at him. He's face is all delicate pale freckled features forced sharp and hard by sheer willpower.

  
  


Years at an academy, he thinks, military training maybe, an impossible to please father.

  
  


_Sul_ , something else supplies for him. A whisper low in the back of his head that makes everything feel like winter for a moment before everything thaws into the reality of the late summer sun.

  
  


Kylo presses his hand against the peeling siding trying to collect himself. The force has never come to him like that before. Whispering someone's secrets like that. The force had always been a, well a force. It liked to smack him around, or to sneak into his head and weave around his thoughts with a white hot heat.

  
  


It did not whisper like a lover.

  
  


"Are you even listening to me?" Hux's voice sharpens and pulls him out of his own thoughts. He looks at Hux and a flicker of emotion, concern?, crosses the man's face, "Are you okay?" He steps forward, hand out to touch him and Kylo flinches backward.

  
  


"Don't touch me." He hisses and Hux rolls his eyes and steps back.

  
  


"You probably just have heatstroke. Have some water."

  
  


"I'm fine." He hisses, although he is really, really, warm, he'll never admit that now.

  
  


Kylo follows Hux around the house kicking at the long grass and weeds waiting for something interesting to happen. He was sure it had to, just look at Hux, he was all nerves and desperately clung to control.

  
  


"You never answered me." Kylo stretches grabbing onto the flaking doorway as Hux finally makes it inside the small house.

  
  


"Answered what?" Hux takes out a flashlight and scans the gloomy, dirty, room. Kylo wonders briefly if Hux has shark repellent in his belt too.

  
  


"Why you wanted to know if Glenn and Francis knew each other."

  
  


Hux stands up straighter than he had been and twists on a heel to look at Kylo like he's crazy. Lots of people look at him like that but it's usually more deserved than this.

  
  


"What?"

  
  


"I told you already."

  
  


"You did?"

  
  


"Yes." Hux closes the distance between them quickly and snapping off a blue glove he rests the back of his hand against Kylo's forehead, "I said," Hux continues like he doesn't have his hand on Kylo's forehead, soft cool hand checking for a fever, "the file said that he went missing last week, and Francis had a note with him when he was killed. I was wondering if they were connected... If they were in a relationship."

  
  


When Hux looks at him at the last word, his eyes boring into him Kylo can feel the cold of a winter day settle around them.

  
  


He can see their breath hanging in the air between them.

  
  


And when he looks down Hux is wearing a different uniform. The pressed white shirt and black pants of a school uniform, a tie hung loosely around his neck, a bright blue against his blood stained white shirt.

  
  


Hux's hand pulls away and the air warms up, eats up their breath and the deputy is wearing his light brown uniform again.

  
  


The redhead makes a low unhappy noise in the back of his throat, "You still didn't hear me did you?" Hux shakes his head and turns back to the scene.

  
  


"Don't touch me again." Kylo makes his voice white hot and angry to keep it from shaking.

  
  


Hux looks back at him confused, "If you didn't look like you were about to topple over and die of consumption maybe I wouldn't have to." The man's voice is equally hard but it's ice cold.

  
  


Hux looks like the summer, red hair, soft freckles but he was winter in human form. Kylo pushes his mind at the man and found it swirling with more purpose than before. Crime scene snapshots and glimpses of a red headed boy, beaten in a mirror, the dull ache of something painful he thought healed. Images of Francis Fallen dead and whispers of, _not this time_ , echo in the man's head.

  
  


"My powers are stronger with touch." Kylo tells him and he can feel the laughter in Hux's mind before a single snort of disapproval hits the air.

  
  


"Sure, Ren. _Powers_."

  
  


It's obvious that he's a nonbeliever. They all generally started off that way until they met him. Even Phasma, realist that she was, believed in his powers now, the entire town came to him when they were in crisis. He was this town’s God.

  
  


And Hux just waved it away, his flashlight in his mouth writing something in his notebook.

  
  


It seemed incredibly unfair to have this philistine doubt him when the man was practically waving psychic pieces of thread in front of him to play with.

  
  


"You don't believe me..."

  
  


Hux doesn't answer, just takes the flashlight out of his mouth and attaches it to his belt. He's looking at the rafters carefully before he jumps up and grabs it. A smirk pulls across his face as he waits to watch the man flounder and fall. The embarrassment will taste all the sweeter coming from those strict schooled features.

  
  


He's disappointed.

  
  


Hux pulls himself up with only the slightest amount of trouble. The softest of grunts from the stretch of whatever injury he has on his side.

  
  


"Does Glenn smoke?" He calls down and Kylo searches through his memories of the bean pole of a kid with light almost coppery hair.

  
  


The images that come through his memory aided by the force is of Glenn all smiles passing a cigarette to the shorter Francis as they walk past him. They stand too close to just be friends. The entire town knew better. Towns this small, you never kept a secret for very long.

  
  


"Yes." Is all Kylo answers.

  
  


If Hux doesn't want to believe in his powers than he sure as fuck wasn't going to give him hints to the case that was turning over and over desperately in his brain.

  
  


Especially since the mission Snoke had given him had more to do with keeping Hux away from the Fallen case then actually finding Glenn.

  
  


Glenn was either dead or three states away by now. Not that he could really blame him, Arkanis was an acquired taste, a little too dark and gritty for idealists like Glenn, Francis and even at one point himself.

  
  


He liked this town now, it matched the armour he wore, tough and dark. Hux didn't look like he belonged, he didn't look like the type of man that would fit in here, he shone too brightly in Kylo's mind, and he had trouble believing that Snoke could control this man like he did with Mitaka and some of the other deputies.

  
  


Hux dropped down from the rafter with an amount of grace he wasn't expecting, a little evidence bag in his hand.

  
  


"He's still here."

  
  


"Who?"

  
  


"Aren't you the mind reader? Shouldn't you know?" Hux taunted and brushed past him.

  
  


Kylo could feel the ice of the man's touch through his sweater as he turned to watch him walk out of the run down building and back out into the sunshine.

  
  


With narrow eyes he pushed his consciousness out to Hux, trying to slip in and read his mind. For nothing else than to push the man off balance.

  
  


The bright spot that is Hux shimmers in his mind as he tries to pick him apart with the force.

  
  


_Sul_

  
  


It whispers again in the back of his mind, softly, almost sweetly and he doesn't understand why it's giving him that name when he was obviously talking about Glenn.

  
  


"Sul..." Kylo whispers and Hux looks back at him a sharp quick movement, eyes narrow.

  
  


"What?"

  
  


"Glenn." He answers instead and Hux's body seems to relax slightly.

  
  


"Do you need a ride back into town? I want to take a look at Glenn's house and talk to his parents."

  
  


Kylo nods and leaves the shade of the house for the baking sunshine. There is something about Hux's shining bright spot in the force now though. He had thought the red color was some sort of cosmic joke about the man's hair but the bright red of the man is dulling into brown.

  
  


Like blood.

  
  


-

  
  


He notes with disdain that Hux is good with people. A skill he most certainly doesn’t have. He can feel the couple in the room shrink away from and he has done nothing but lean against the wall and watch Hux question them.

  
  


Nothing about what he can see of the man’s mind suggests that he should be good with people. Kylo decides that instead Hux is just good at acting. He even pulls out a handkerchief, embroidered with BH, and hands it to Mrs. Curtis when she starts crying.

  
  


He's gentle with the parents, kind and clear. They already know about the death of Francis, everyone in town will know by now, and they are worried that something has happened to Glenn as well.

  
  


"They were inseparable before he disappeared." Mr. Curtis offers worried. He glances past Hux to Kylo and he can feel the fear from across the room.

  
  


He's afraid of him.

  
  


Most of the town is but there is something different about this fear, he can taste something off about it in the air, he is afraid of a very specific action, but he can’t pin it down.

  
  


"We used to find Frankie up in Glenn's room in the mornings sometimes. I was worried that there might be something wrong-"

  
  


Mr. Curtis squeezes her shoulder and it looks loving and intended to comfort but she looks up quickly to Kylo as well and stops her train of thought.

  
  


Emergency breaks.

  
  


Hux throws an intrigued look over his shoulder at him and there is a flash of the man he was in the woods. A hurricane hidden inside of the put together man, sharp killer’s eyes slashing through him.

  
  


Hux leaves the parents to search the room. It's already been searched but the man doesn't seem to care.

  
  


Standing in a bedroom with Hux makes the air vibrate around him. The room is a mess, and he leans against an old King Kong poster and watches Hux move.

  
  


"Are you going to help at all?" The man's voice is smooth but there's an edge to it that's new. The man is tired and frustrated.

  
  


"I am helping."

  
  


Helping who though was the question because he had no intention of helping Hux in his journey to pin the murder of Francis on the mayor like his every thought points too. He didn't care who the killer was, he just knew that Snoke wanted the ginger out of it. So out of it he would stay.

  
  


“Shouldn’t you be smelling a sneaker or something?” Hux waved a lazy hand at him and somehow even that looked precise and controlled which only made Kylo angrier.

  
  


“I’m a psychic not a bloodhound, dick.” He hisses back picking something at random off the dresser and throwing it at the carefully pushed back strands of copper hair.

  
  


Surprising him Hux dodged it easily. It wasn’t as impressive as catching it right in front of his face or anything but it hinted at a much more disciplined body then he looked like he should have. He didn’t like how Hux kept making him think about his body. It was surely pastey and soft from pushing paper, freckled and pale like some doughy ginger doll. But then the way he had pulled himself up onto that rafter and easily dodged and bent populated a dark corner of his mind with copper hair and lean pliant bodies.

  
  


“I don’t care how your ‘magic’ bullshit is supposed to work but the least you could do is help me search the room Ren.”

  
  


With a purposefully exaggerated roll of his eyes he starts shifting the clothes in the closet actively ignoring the burning feeling of Hux’s gaze on his back and the whispering of the force in his head.

 


	3. Adventures in Babysitting

  
  


The few hours he had spent with Ren was more than enough for Hux to decide exactly how he felt about the man.

  
  


He hated him.

  
  


He was a joke, a waste of time.

  
  


A pretty waste of time but one none the less. Hux turned away from where Ren was haphazardly searching the closet, he would have to search it again afterwards. There was something about the man’s form that was pleasing, he was all broad shoulders, and dark hair and a build that suggested that he could probably throw Hux over his shoulder without even breaking a sweat. It was confusing when the man also seemed like he would swoon at a moment's notice. His dark brown eyes would glaze over, his skin, clammy and pale, his breathing would get ragged and then he would have the audacity to act as if he was fine.

  
  


The man, as far as he could tell, and Hux had always been a good judge of character, was a menace.

  
  


Mitaka was right. This was a punishment. A punishment for doing his job.

  
  


Snoke wanted him to work with Kylo, to get to know the town.

  
  


What kind of town this was was coming through bright and clear in the reaction of the Curtis’ to Mr. Ren being in the room. They were a mess, scared, but not for their son, for some sort of unspoken retribution.

  
  


Hux glanced over at Kylo who was bent down in the closet, dark jeans too tight and distracting, there was no way that this man was an enforcer for whatever mess of Serpico level corruption was going on here. Hux had a hard time imagining Ren being focused enough to properly strike fear into anyone’s hearts.

  
  


But Mr. And Mrs. Curtis downstairs would have said otherwise.

  
  


The tall blonde from the station made much more sense, now she looked like she could break people in half.

  
  


Hux tries to push the distractions out of his brain, on hands and knees pulling boxes of junk out from under a teenage boys bed didn’t normally deserve his entire attention but the alternatives weren’t any more pleasant. He finds porn under the bed, real, paper porn, glossy magazine pages of men. He flipped through the magazine just in case a note was scribbled across some very naked men. It seemed that he and Glenn had similar tastes.

  
  


All muscular men with dark hair and eyes that pulled. Strange, signs pointed to Glenn being linked to Frank, these men looked more like Ren’s frame promised.

  
  


“What are you looking at?” Ren’s breath was on his neck, leaning over him to stare over his shoulder at the magazine. Hux’s posture stiffens, how had he not caught him before he got this close, “Physical porn? Didn’t this kid know about the internet?” He snatches it out of Hux’s hands and stands up.

  
  


Hux turns in time to watch the man unfold the centerfold.

  
  


“What are you doing?”

  
  


“What you can look at porn on the job but I can’t?”

  
  


“I wasn’t…” Hux pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs deeply, “I was looking for any notes on it.”

  
  


“Oh like Adventures in Babysitting.” Ren nods sagely and starts flipping through the pages.

  
  


“Like what?” He can’t help but ask.

  
  


Ren pauses and looks up at Hux, “You’re kidding right.”

  
  


Hux has no idea what he’s talking about and it must show on his face because Ren closes the magazine giving him his full attention. Something he decides almost immediately is something he never wants on him again. It’s pulling at something in his chest, it feels dark and dangerous, like the edges of some whirlpool grabbing at him trying to drag him under.

  
  


“A babysitter gets cheated on and takes the three kids she’s babysitting in to chicago so she can confront her boyfriend? Shenanigans ensue?”

  
  


Hux shakes his head. He never really had time for movies. He’s seen a few documentaries and a couple of science fiction movies when he was in the academy, something in the officer’s lounge in the middle of the night on fuzzy cable. Something with naked women that he didn’t really understand the appeal of.

  
  


“Thor fixes the car? Everyone learns a life lesson?”

  
  


“I haven’t seen it Ren.” He hisses and grabs the magazine back. It’s pretty safe to say that there are no messages in the glossy thankfully pristine pages other than to hint at Glenn’s preference for physical media.

  
  


He notices that Ren is staring at his hair but he doesn’t ask, it wouldn't be the first time someone got distracted by his red hair, he just pulls his notepad out of his uniform pocket and starts writing his meticulous notes about the room.

  
  


The smell, lingering tobacco and heavy vanilla air freshener.

  
  


The bed, unmade.

  
  


A phone charger is missing. The shape clear in the dust of the nightstand, one of those square block things.

  
  


The magazine.

  
  


He drops the magazine back onto the box of junk when something catches his eye. Bending down he snags the edge of a photo. One of those instant ones. Man this kid was a bit of a luddite.

  
  


The photo is of two boys,one is Francis and the other he’s sure is Glenn.

  
  


God…

  
  


Laying dead battered in a pool of his own blood Francis Fallen had just looked like a body. Just a crime photo, the first clues to a mystery Hux was going to solve but this…

  
  


He looks like a child. Well not a child exactly. He looks young and so much like Sul. A little rounder around the edges and older but there was a spark in the dark eyes that was painfully familiar.

  
  


This whole image was familiar and yet all wrong.

  
  


It was reversed.

  
  


Glenn, with Hux’s hair, kissing Sul. No. Frank. Hux is kissing… no.

  
  


God.

  
  


His mind is a flurry of confusion because everything is so frighteningly familiar and different.

  
  


He turns to Ren, “Is this Glenn? With red hair?” He points at the offending boy. The photo that had been attached to the missing person’s file had shown ash blonde hair but this picture had his hair clearly as red as his own.

  
  


“Yeah.” Kylo reaches out to grab the photo and their fingers brush as he takes it. He looks at him, dark eyes penetrating and invasive for a flash before they glaze over. He seems to sway a little and fear grabs hold of Hux’s chest. Something cold and painful tightening around his lungs. Ren sways all the more obviously and Hux grabs his arms and sets him on the bed before he has a chance to fall.

  
  


There is definately something wrong with the man. He leans him back on the bed, leaning over him trying to find some sort of zipper or buttons that will allow him to loosen the sweater bunched up around the man’s neck.

  
  


He’s distracted running through a short list of heat stroke symptoms, and what he knows of consumption and anemia. Maybe he just needed a snack? Some water? There’s a panic settling in his bones at the thought of how displeased Snoke will be if his little pet wizard were to die on his watch.

  
  


“Nice to know you care.” Ren whispers, voice rough like he hasn’t used it in years he pushes Hux’s hands away so he can sit up.

  
  


They are far too close for Hux’s taste, the hot puffs of Ren’s uneven breathing on his mouth.

  
  


“He doesn’t look like you.” Ren tells him firmly.

  
  


“What?”

  
  


“Glenn… he doesn’t look like you did.”

  
  


“How would you know what I looked like at that age.”

  
  


A smile slowly spreads across the man’s face, “Psychic.”

  
  


“Right.” Hux tries not to roll his eyes but he doesn’t quite manage it.

  
  


“What do I have to do to make you believe me?” He asks as Hux pushes himself back up off the bed, leaning against the bedroom window, no screen he notes. The sun is low in the sky now, the interview with the Curtis’ took longer than he would have thought, and the butter yellow light is thrown over Ren, his dark mess of wavy hair lightened. His eyes somehow look darker as he watches him.

  
  


He’s waiting for his answer but he doesn’t have one. There is nothing he could do that would make him believe in magic. He hadn’t believed in magic, fate, hope, love for years.

  
  


A very specific date when everything had melted away, leaving him an adult in the body of a fourteen year old, too harsh and mature for his body.

  
  


“What secret do you want me to pull from you Hux to make you believe?”

  
  


“I don’t have any secrets Ren.” The words are out in the perfectly timed manner, too quick and it was an obvious lie, too slow and it would seem like he was trying to count his sins. This was a conversation he was familiar with.

  
  


Everyone has secrets.

  
  


That would be the response.

  
  


That was always the response, and it was easy to twist around, to make the conversation about their secrets rather than his. Hux eyes the man, all long limbs and blackhole eyes and tries to imagine what kind of secrets are behind that expressive face. It had to be something good if people were afraid of him.

  
  


“It’s not that you have none, Hux, it’s which one to pick.” His voice is dark and claws at his insides. Ren leans forward on the bed, the light sliding off him his eyes in the shade of the room, dark and deep and pulling at him. It’s a predatory look and Hux narrows his gaze at it. He wasn’t used to being someone’s prey but Ren certainly made it seem like he was aiming to devour him.

  
  


“Yes but how deputy?” He asks, tone low as his mouth pulls languidly into something fierce and pleased.

  
  


Hux takes an angry breath through his nose and pushes away from the wall. He can’t believe he had said that part out loud, there was something about the man that was oddly engaging and familiar and Hux is sure it is loosening his tongue.

  
  


Sul.

  
  


He reminds him of Sul.

  
  


The realization twists his insides, clamps down on his lungs.

  
  


“Go home, Ren.” He tells him with as much authority as he can muster after that realization, which is, thanks to his training, rather a lot. He watches Ren’s posture stiffen as if it would somehow help him to push against Hux.

  
  


“I’m supposed to be your partner.”

  
  


“You’re not a partner you’re a babysitter Ren. Go home and let me get some actual work done.” Hux turned his attention to the cigarette ash staining the windowsill, “I promise not to solve anything until at least tomorrow.”

  
  


He could hear Ren moving behind him and the bedroom door opened, “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning.”

  
  


“Do you need the address?” He asks resigning himself to his fate.

  
  


The man scoffs, “Of course not.”

  
  


“Oh right, how could I forget. Psychic.” He says the word like it’s dipped in acid.

  
  


“That and it’s a small town.”

  
  


Hux rolls his eyes and turns to say something clever but before the no doubt witty remark can be formed he see’s that the doorway is empty. Ren, the psychic babysitter, is gone.

  
  


Thank god, maybe now he can get some actual police work done.

 


	4. Best waffles in town

-  
  


Kylo hadn’t slept.

  
  


He had never been a very good sleeper, the force tended to send him visions while he slept that he didn’t care to experience and it didn’t exactly make for the most restful sleep.

  
  


Worried that he would get more visions of deputy Hux and his dark haired friend ( _Sul._ The Force supplied again), Kylo had instead spent the night watching Adventures in Babysitting. The wee hours of the night and morning spent admiring the eighties soundtrack and terrible hair instead of thinking about Hurricane Hux.

  
  


The man held no fear in his eyes when he looked at Kylo, irritation sure but no fear. It was something of an anomaly here, a novelty. No one had looked at him like that, like he was just a person, since he had gotten to town.

  
  


Or maybe it was when he had done his first ‘job’ for Snoke. A little muscle and mind digging on his part had helped get Mayor Fallen elected all those years ago. Not that anyone had ever said anything about that.

  
  


It may have been the time he had shown up at City Hall, with blood on his hands and picked Mayor Fallen up by the throat and sent him into the wall.

  
  


The man wasn’t small and there was no way he should have been able to do such a thing, the man was an ox.

  
  


Thinking back on it, it had probably been the moment when he had bent down over the mayor and told him in no uncertain terms that he was replaceable.

  
  


That had probably done it.

  
  


Once Mitaka had told Hux all about him, his eyes were sure to change.

  
  


Good.

  
  


He didn’t want to give any more thought to the exactly blue green hue of the man’s eyes.

  
  


It had just been such a long time since anyone had thought of him with the hot wispy threads of desire that Hux had been sending his way in Glenn’s bedroom. Maybe he could just distract the deputy that way. Just have sex with him until Snoke was satisfied that the ginger wouldn’t get tangled up in his plans.

  
  


Yeah.

  
  


That was probably doable.

  
  


Hux obviously liked men, and he obviously had a type, and it was dark hair and dark eyes, tall and muscular and well he ticked all the boxes.

  
  


An alarm goes off on his phone and with a sigh he pushes himself away from couch and grabs his keys. He planned to arrive early at the deputy’s place in hopes to catch him disheveled.

  
  
  


—

  
  


Hux answers the door in perfect condition, his hair is neatly pushed back away from his face, his boots and belt shine.

  
  


The deputy is a morning person and Kylo finds he hates him for it just a little.

  
  


“You’re awfully chipper. Did you solve the case?” He can’t help but ask, pushing his way into the tiny apartment.

  
  


The apartment is obviously too small for Hux, a studio apartment above a bakery, there are boxes everywhere, the kitchen is little more than a mini fridge and a hot plate. The living room packed with towers of boxes, an ancient wardrobe and bed that must have come with the apartment. Hux didn't seem to bring any furniture with him other than a bookshelf, which is the only thing that has been unpacked yet. The boxes are all in meticulous stacks, full inventory lists taped to the front of them.

  
  


This is exactly what he had expected his mind to be like. Little boxes full of inventoried items. The box with tragic past romances over here, the daddy issue boxes in the corner. But no, when he looked back at the deputy he still felt like a swirl of smokey chaos.

  
  


The wardrobe is hanging open and he can see a military dress uniform, white, in one of those plastic zip up bags, hanging in it. From what Kylo can see he’s color coded his clothes and he can’t believe how ridiculous this man is. Everything in the apartment screamed that Hux was the most boring man alive, his bookshelf was filled with non fiction, biographies and a couple classics. Which he didn't for a second believe Hux had actually read.

  
  


No one actually read Moby Dick.

  
  


Kylo ran his fingers along the carefully organized spines to keep from staring at the bed. He didn't want it to be obvious that he wanted them to end up there. Hux seemed the kind of man who liked things to be his idea, or at least seem that way.

  
  


Before he could pull anything from the bookshelf to make fun of the man, a fuzzy heat twined around his legs. Looking down he found a large cat twisting its way around his legs, getting ginger hairs on his black jeans.

  
  


“What the hell is that?” he points as the cat sits at his feet and looks up at him. The cat seems to be judging him and he doesn’t care for it at all. Animals don’t tend to like him. He thinks it might be a force thing. Or it might have something to do with his short temper.

  
  


“She’s my cat.”

  
  


“You don’t seem like the cat type.” He tells him staring back at the cat, he can’t look away first, the cat will think it owns him.

  
  


“What you think I’m a dog person?”

  
  


“Honestly you seem like a fish person. If that.”

  
  


“Her name is Millicent. Can we go please?”

  
  


“Millicent?”

  
  


“What’s wrong with my cat’s name?”

  
  


“Nothing. It’s just… it’s not very catty.” The cat looks away finally and he pulls his eyes back up to Hux.

  
  


“What? Should I have named her Lady fluffington?” Hux deadpans picking up a manilla folder off the small kitchen counter, “Can we go or do you want to stand around in my apartment all day discussing cat names?”

  
  


Honestly he’d rather do something else in his room but the edge in Hux’s voice pushes all ideas of more enjoyable distractions from his mind.

  
  


“Fine, we can go. We need to stop at the diner.” He tells him stooping to run a gloved hand over the cat’s soft orange hair as he leaves.

  
  


“Okay,” hux seems a little confused as he follows Kylo out of the apartment, “Does it have something to do with the Curtis case?”

  
  


“What? No. I just really want a waffle and a good coffee.”

-

  
  


If there was another place in town that made a good waffle Kylo would never step foot in this diner again.

  
  


As it was every other breakfast place in town kind of sucked, so he leads Hux through the jingling front door and down into an empty booth.

  
  


Hux sits across from him and sets the manilla folder, his little pocket notebook, and his cell phone out and lines them up on the Formica.

  
  


"You are ridiculous." Kylo tells him setting a laminated menu on top of Hux's carefully lined up items.

  
  


"You are calling me ridiculous? You're covered head to toe in black and leather in the middle of a heatwave."

  
  


"The heat doesn't bother me." He tells him a sharp edge to his voice that makes the ginger smirk knowing he's gotten to him.

  
  


"Of course that's why you swooned yesterday."

  
  


"That had nothing to do with- It was my powers damn it!" He slaps his hands onto the table but Hux doesn't even look up at him. He's too busy checking to see if there is anything on the backside of his menu.

  
  


No.

  
  


There isn't.

  
  


It's a greasy spoon not a Michelin star restaurant.

  
  


Kylo slumps back into the cracked red leather booth and glares at Hux hard enough to burn. Narrows his eyes and wills the manilla folder to flip and spill onto the floor just to spite the man. Telekinesis wasn't one of his specialties, he used to work with Snoke all the time when he was younger. It was a bit of a drain honestly but it would be worth it to see Hux's stupid face.

  
  


The top flap flutters ever so briefly before laying inert like Kylo wasn't trying to push it with his mind at all. Clenching his jaw he leans forward and focuses.

  
  


Nothing.

  
  


That's... That's not right. He should have been able to make the folder do the Charleston for Christ sakes. It turned his stomach into cement, heavy, worried cement. For the past couple of days he'd been having trouble with control, visions overriding him, fluttering in and replacing reality without any provocation.

  
  


He didn't like it.

  
  


He didn't like most things but he _really_ didn't like this.

  
  


It must be Hux's fault. The man had arrived more than a few days ago though. He'd seen the flash of ginger hair around town for a week, heard Phasma quietly complain about how the man was too stiff to fit in.

  
  


Still though. He wanted to blame Hux. So he did.

  
  


"What can I get you sir?"

  
  


Hux looked up from the menu and with a glance at Kylo turned his entire focus onto the waiter.

  
  


Finn.

  
  


"You seem familiar..." Hux starts before shaking his head for a brief moment and ordering corn beef hash and a coffee.

  
  


Finn nods and scurries quickly away to place the order.

  
  


"Why didn't you order?" Hux asks sliding the menu back into its special holder.

  
  


"I don't need to."

  
  


"Oh? Did you speak right into his mind with your powers?" He mocks him. The ginger is mocking him and it is way too fucking early for that shit.

  
  


He wants to say yes.

  
  


"I only come here for the waffles and coffee. I'd never come here otherwise."

  
  


"Is there something wrong with the place?" Hux turns in his seat and his eyes sweep over the room. Kylo doesn't know how but he just knows that Hux has counted all the possible exits and good points of cover, "I mean it's a little run down but I thought that was just 'small town charm' or whatever they call it."

  
  


He's not sure if he should tell Hux about Finn and his slanderous boyfriend. Snoke told him to keep him out of things until he was sure of the man's loyalties, but he just can't pass up a chance to bother Finn.

  
  


Finn comes back quickly, flips their mugs and pours out the probably criminally strong coffee. He pulls a handful of creamers out of his apron pocket and drops them in front of Kylo.

  
  


"So how's your boyfriend doing Finny?" He pulls at the words tauntingly, leaning forward and smirking at Hux behind his hands.

  
  


Finn stands as straight as he can, which is pretty ramrod straight really, his jaw moves clenching and unclenching, Finn's short fingernails clawing into the flesh of his palms trying to stay calm.

  
  


"You know exactly how he is Ren." Finn doesn't look at him, staring hotly at the table between the cups.

  
  


"He not out of the hospital yet? I really thought he'd be out by now..."

  
  


"Fuck you Ren." Finn whispers a mixture of pain and anger that normally feeds Kylo's power, he can feel the turbulent dark feelings rolling off the young man in waves.

  
  


"He knew the cost of lying about something like that in this town." Kylo waves a hand lazily, his eyes flicking between Finn and Hux. Hux is stony faced but there is something about his eyes that makes him want to push Finn.

  
  


"He wasn't lying." Finn tells him losing all the calm he's been desperately grasping at, "It's the truth and you fucking know it Ren. You're a monster and you're protecting a monster." Finn slams down a couple packets of sugar onto the table and turns his attention to Hux, "Welcome to hell deputy. I'm sure you'll fit right in." Finn storms away and something wonderful swells inside of Kylo when he hears the shaking sobs as Finn rushes away.

  
  


The rush of power fills Kylo, a thick, heavy oily feeling that makes the force more malleable, with a smug smile and a flick of his wrist the manilla folder practically jumps off the table.

  
  


Hux looks up and sighs heavily before leaning out of the booth and shuffling his papers back into the folder. Bastard hadn't even been looking.

  
  


Hux sets the folder down, further from the edge of the table this time, he has the gall to look up to look for a vent before grabbing his notebook and finally looking at Kylo.

  
  


"So go on."

  
  


"Go on what?"

  
  


"You obviously want to tell me all about this." He rolls his wrist, pen between his fingers, "To be honest I find it a little hard to believe that you put anyone in the hospital. I've known you of a day and I must say you have a terrible habit of swooning.”

  
  


Kylo’s mouth drops open, “I don’t have a habit of fucking swooning.”

  
  


“Oh please you’re a harlequin heroine.” Hux’s voice was dry, he had the audacity to say that about him and act bored!

  
  


A hatred for Hux boils in his blood. He leans over the table and grabs Hux’s chin between harsh fingers and yanks the man’s head up away from his notebook. Kylo narrows his eyes, their faces so close he can feel the man’s even breathing against his face, “It would be in your best interests deputy not to underestimate me.”

  
  


He had enjoyed the fearlessness of Hux’s presence but he will not take being made fun of in such a way. He was Kylo god damn Ren, master of powers beyond normal perception, he was the right hand of the law in this town, he was to be feared, respected and Hux’s mind practically sang out that he felt neither for him.

  
  


It was beyond infuriating.

  
  


Hux’s eyes flickered across his face and for a fraction of a second his expression softens and the hatred in his blood melts a fraction.

  
  


“I’m a lawman Ren, I deal in realities, in concrete facts. I know what killers look like Ren and they don’t look like you.”

  
  


_They look like me_

  
  


The words hit Kylo in the chest and he pulls back and sitting across from him isn’t Hux, not really. It’s young Hux in his bloodied uniform. Blood smeared across his cheek and wet across his chest as if he’d been holding someone. The man… boy’s eyes are red and tear tracks are obvious.

  
  


Someone stands by the table and young Hux looks up at him, a young man with butter yellow hair and wide shoulders sneers down at him, _If the navy doesn’t work out for you Hux, you could always go into acting. Crocodile tears suit your face._

  
  


Hux narrows his eyes and looks directly at Kylo, _Ren?_

  
  


The scene flickers and Hux is once again in his proper adult body with no sign or blood or tears, crocodile or otherwise. His face set in a hard and suspicious glare.

  
  


“Do you not want you’re waffle?”

  
  


“He’s had vision.” Finn grumbles unhappily from where he’s standing at the edge of the booth Kylo’s plate of waffles in hand, “Just give him a minute.”

  
  


“You don’t seriously believe in that shit do you?”

  
  


“I believe in a lot of things now I never would have and have lost faith in things I never thought I would. Arkanis will do that to you.” Finn puts the waffles down on the table.

  
  


“Don’t pull Hux into your pity party Finn.” He smirks but his mouth feels desert dry and his skin feels cold for no reason.

  
  


“Eat a dick Kylo. Eat all the dicks.” Finn huffs and turns on a heel and walks away. He’s trying to hold his head up high but Kylo can feel the fear and anger radiating off the young man.

 


	5. The fall of General Hux

  
  


“What was that about?” Hux asks deciding in the interest of actually getting an answer out of the man to forgo any needling.

  
  


“Finn? He used to be a deputy. His reporter boyfriend was stirring up trouble.” Kylo shrugs. All his need for bravado apparently replaced with desire to get as much waffle in his mouth as possible.

  
  


Hux pushes his bowl of hash away in favour of his notebook and starts jotting down neat notes on a new page.

  
  


Finn

\- waiter @ diner

\- former deputy

\- reporter boyfriend

\- grudge against Ren/the department

  
  


He makes a special note in the back of his notebook to find out what exactly this ‘trouble’ entailed.

  
  


There are only two other notes on the back page, which he saves for his most important questions.

  
  


**Francis Fallen + Glenn Curtis???**

  
  


Followed by:

  
  


**Ren?**

  
  


He’s not even sure what his question about Mr. Ren actually is, but the man sitting across from him shovelling waffles into his face like he’d never eat again, is an enigma.

  
  


An annoying child of a man, who wears too much black and leather for the weather, who had a staring contest with his cat only twenty minutes ago, a man who swoons and sneers like he does should not hold the attention of everyone in a room.

  
  


But he does, everyone in the diner seems to be painfully aware of Ren’s presence. He doesn’t really believe that this man could put anyone in a hospital bed but he seems to be the only one in the entire town to think that.

  
  


“What kind of trouble?”

  
  


“What?”

  
  


“Finn’s boyfriend. The reporter? What kind of trouble?”

  
  


Ren’s eyes flit away from his and land somewhere behind his ear. Ren shrugs, “It’s not important. It’s over now.”

  
  


“Not for Finn…”

  
  


“Finn doesn’t matter.” Kylo waves his waffle laden fork in the air lazily, “What matters is your breakfast is getting cold.”

  
  


A sigh slipped past his lips as he flipped his notebook and secured it safely in his breast pocket. He carefully moves the precious folder to the inside of the booth, away from where an errant blast of a/c could send it off the table again. He pulls the bowl back in front of him and starts to eat his breakfast.

  
  


Hux wasn’t much for heavy breakfasts, he was much more a muffin and coffee kind of man but with Ren shifting erratically between devouring and savouring his breakfast he knew he had made the right choice in a larger breakfast. He’s going to be stuck in this diner for longer than he would like.

He's glad to have something to occupy his attention, especially with the feeling of someone glaring at the back of his head sending chills down his spine. It made him flip through combat training in his mind, looking for the best option should Finn, and it was so obviously Finn, decided to do a little more than stare. It seemed highly unlikely that he would actually attempt to fight him but Ren seemed to enjoy pushing the young man’s buttons and Hux always liked to be prepared.

  
  


__

  
  


“So what’s in the folder anyway?” Ren finally asks after they get back in the car.

  
  


Hux had paid for breakfast.

  
  


He has the weird feeling that Ren wouldn’t have paid at all if he had gone by himself.

  
  


“Crime scene photos.” He opens the folder for Ren to see, leaning across the console to give him better access. He doesn’t even bother to ask if he wants to see, if he’ll be bothered by the brutal nature of the photos, bothered by the age of the lifeless form.

  
  


To his credit he only pales slightly as he pulls back, “Where did you get those. Snoke took you off the Fallen case.”

  
  


“I have my ways.”

  
  


His ways in this instance had doe brown eyes and a desperate desire to please him.

  
  


Mitaka really was adorable, a little too sweet, a little too gentle, he would be too pliant he was positive. There was no fight or fire in the man. Last night Hux had gone back to the station with every intention of doing paperwork and sorting through his notes. Honest. He hadn’t meant to lead on Mitaka, but the man kept sneaking glances at him while he worked and when he had allowed his attention to fall on the man he had practically jumped out of his seat to give Hux the folder with the copies of the paperwork.

  
  


“Do your ways happen to have a crush on you?”

  
  


Hux looks at Ren but doesn’t say anything, he’s not willing to tell him straight out that he’s got Mitaka in his pocket. A secret source isn’t much use if it isn’t a secret. Especially since Mitaka was easily intimidated and no matter of intense looks and touches with promise would be able to pull the man’s strings if they were tangled up in fear of Snoke and his apparent hound.

  
  


He may not have been afraid of Ren but Mitaka certainly was.

  
  


“It doesn’t matter.”

  
  


“How exactly does this help us find Glenn?”

  
  


“Well I’ve been pouring over the information all night and I’m sure that Glenn is still in town.”

  
  


“He’s not.”

  
  


“He is.”

  
  


“He isn’t. I’ve been looking for him for a week and he’s gone. He took a backpack full of clothes and left. He’s never coming back.”

  
  


“If you are so sure he’s a lost cause why are you still looking?” It certainly wasn’t for his parent’s sake. Hux had gotten the impression that the department and the public had a pretty strenuous relationship.

  
  


Ren decided to start the car instead of answer him.

  
  


“Maybe I should drive?”

  
  


Ren looks at him like he wants to set him on fire, “No one drives my car but me.” He wrings his hands against the steering wheel, leather gloves against leather wheel, “No one.” It’s almost a growl as he leans across the small space to get in his face.

  
  


Hux can’t really understand why anyone would be so protective of a car, it was old, and had obviously seen better days, it was reletively well maintained since he was fairly certain the model was older than him. The interior was black leather or ‘leather’ he wasn’t really sure and ‘wood’. As far as he could tell it was just a car. It didn’t even have a usb input, fuck it didn’t even have a tape deck.

  
  


He hopes the a/c at least worked in this piece of shit.

  
  


“Piece of-” Ren seethes next to him, “This a ‘70 Challenger. This is a masterpiece. This car could get from Colorado to California in 15 hours.” He grumbles a smile pushing begrudgingly into his features. It feels like a joke he isn’t in on.

  
  


Everything is starting to feel like that with Ren to be honest. It’s beyond obvious that he is being taken for a ride while deputy Phasma and Mitaka deal with the Fallen murder. Ren a pretty little distraction, a wild man and a wild goose chase to keep him busy until they’ve put away someone for the Fallen murder.

They haven’t even spoken to the mayor about his son other than the basic do you know where you son was, do you know why he’d be there. It boiled Hux’s blood, it was so obvious to him what had happened. He could practically feel the bruises his father had left behind, could feel the cold of the winter air in his lungs when he looked at the photos.

  
  


He felt some sort of kindred bond with Francis Fallen, he hadn’t felt a connection of this strength, with anyone or anything since Sul. He owed it to Sul... Francis.

  
  


No one had been punished for Sul’s death but the self punishment he had put himself through and it just, it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

  
  


“Where do you want to go?” Ren breaks through his thoughts his voice harsh like a slap to the face and his lungs fill with the hot stuffy air of the summer.

  
  


“Where do kids go around here?” Hux was certain there had to be some other location where Glenn could be hiding out, waiting, maybe he was still waiting for Francis to join him.

  
  


“Other than the Fontaine place?”

  
  


“Yes.”

  
  


“I wouldn’t know.”

  
  


“You wouldn’t know?” Hux turns in his seat to look at Ren, was he fucking with him? How could he not know? Every town had a couple places the adolescents hide from adults and responsibilities. There had to be someplace else. A disused factory, an old mill, a revine, a quarry, anything.

  
  


He hadn’t had much experience with those kinds of places himself to be fair, he had spent his life in his father’s military academy and then right into west point and the military to here. He hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to hide from his responsibilities.

  
  


“I’m not from here.” Ren tells him finally moving the car down the street, “But you’re spy is. He should still be at the station.” Ren narrows his eyes at a clock on the dash. He’s honestly not even sure if lights up. He would hate to be in this car at night, he’s sure none of the indicators on the dash light up. He can see the vague green/white of glow in the dark paint on the needles. He’d kill for the updated, lovely squad car he had driven yesterday.

  
  


"Where are you from?" He asks in an attempt to push his mind away from the state of Ren's muscle car and Ren's mind away from how he's using Mitaka.

  
  


Ren looks at him as they pull up to a stop light, was that too personal of a question? It seemed pretty baseline to him, a surface question people ask when they pretend to give a shit.

  
  


"Somewhere else." He tells him darkly and shifts his focus to driving the short distance to the station, "What about you? Where are you from, deputy?"

  
  


He doesn't ask like he wants to know, there is no eye contact, no tell in his voice, curiosity or otherwise.

  
  


"It's not important." He tells him running his fingers over the manilla.

  
  


If they are supposed to actually be partners they are absolutely terrible at it. Partners as he's heard were supposed to be open with each other, trust each other.

  
  


And well...

  
  


Hux looks across the small car at the dark cloud of a person. Takes in his prominent nose, dark hair, black hole eyes, long lashes against pale skin and knows without a doubt that he doesn't trust Ren further than he could throw him.

  
  


Which after the shrapnel had wrecked havoc with his side surely couldn't be very far.

  
  


His hand skimmed across his right side, a habit he had yet to break himself of. It called attention to his weakness. His father would be appalled.

  
  


Then again his father would have been appalled for a lot of reasons. He hadn't put all that work into his upbringing for him to just be some powerless deputy in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere.

  
  


He had tried his father's plan. He had followed the path the man had set out for his only son to a t. He had top marks at the academy, across the board, had become the youngest member of the Commandant's Cadet's, had an impressive naval career. His opinions had been highly sought after, he had his hands in so many intelligence operations, his plans always had the desired results.

  
  


Tactical genius.

  
  


That's what they had called him.

  
  


They didn't call him that anymore.

  
  


General Hux was gone. The man who looked at maps and statistics and could eek out a victory from the most dire of situations.

  
  


He had lost everything the day that bomb had gone off in his office. He still heard the chatter about General Hux, his hair turned red by the blood of his enemies, how his glare could crack the most hardened man.

  
  


General Hux haunted.

  
  


Haunted by the boy in his office the day of the bomb.

  
  


His father had sent the boy, he wasn't sure exactly why. He didn't get the letter until after, and he honestly hadn’t read it.

  
  


Hux had tracked down exactly how the letter bomb had made it into his office, had punished them all.

  
  


General Hux, who went crazy after that boy jumped in front of him, who broke down with the boys broken body in his hands.

  
  


The blood pooled on the porcelain tile of the makeshift office he had been in. His ears ringing painfully, his side ripped open where the boy hadn’t been.

  
  


"Stop that."

  
  


Ren's voice pulls him out of the bloody memory and he moves his hand quickly from where it was pressing into his side, into the scars.

  
  


"I wasn't doing anything..."

  
  


Ren pulls up in front of the station, the squad cars are all gone. Just a motorcycle in front, there went his hopes of switching cars then.

  
  


"You think too loud-"

  
  


He rolls his eyes and opens the door, careful to leave the folder in the glove compartment (a compartment filled with candy, yellowed parking tickets with another city's crest on them, and an extra pair of driving gloves)

  
  


"Oh right, I forgot because your _psychic_."

  
  


"Don't say it like that."

  
  


"Like what?"

  
  


"Like the word leaves a bad taste in your mouth."

  
  


He won't stop saying it like that because it _does_ leave a bad taste in his mouth. He makes his way into the station actively not listening to Ren complain about how hard he shut the car door.

  
  


A part of him hopes that Mitaka won't be in at all, that he's out somewhere being the good little deputy he is.

  
  


But there he is, sitting at his desk, shifting through files, and entering something or other into his computer.

  
  


He doesn't miss the way that Mitaka's cheeks flush when he notices Hux walk up to his desk. From the roll of Ren's eyes he doesn't miss it either.

 


	6. Bren and LT Andersen

 

 

Kylo has never really cared for Mitaka. He was an ingenue, boring and desperately sweet, terrifyingly wholesome. How he managed to stay in the Arkanis sheriffs department for as long as he had and not turn coated like Finn was beyond him.

  
  


He wouldn’t be all that surprised if bluebirds did his hair in the morning.

  
  


Hux is leaning against the younger man’s desk looking down at him with that intense stare and the man is a fucking puddle. It was embarrassing. The man’s face flushed and he keeps biting his lip as if he could pull Hux’s attention to his abused mouth.

  
  


“Did you sleep well Mitaka?” Kylo expects him to drip honey, to drown Mitaka in kind soft words but his tone is the same as when he talks to him, well it’s a little more even. What he doesn’t expect however is for Hux to reach out and brush the back of his hand across the seated man’s cheek.

  
  


Knuckles across cheekbone and he can practically hear Mitaka’s heart pound from where he’s waiting in the doorway.

  
  


The man is flooding the room with _yes, please god, yes_

  
  


And he gets flashes of fantasies he would never have pegged Mitaka for having. It’s a lot of having Hux towering over him, hard hands on pliant flesh, bruises and teeth, and hard earned praise.

  
  


He shakes the flashes of images away with a lot more ease than he’s been able to manage for anything the force has supplied about Hux.

  
  


“You look pale… Make sure you take care of yourself Mitaka.” A faint smile slides into Hux’s face and it’s actually a rather nice look on him. Mitaka obviously thinks so too.

  
  


His words stumble out, like he’s tried to cram too many of them in his mouth at once, “I, I, I normally go to bed earlier. I just…”

  
  


“You shouldn’t upset your routine for me Mitaka.” Hux tells him firmly and leans in quickly to whisper something into the man’s ear. He can’t hear him from his position but he can see Mitaka’s hands clench and the station drowns in the man’s desperation for Hux.

  
  


For Hux’s approval, for his affection, for his body.

  
  


Kylo isn’t sure he understands that much desire for the red head. Yes he is good looking but the man is ice.

  
  


Apparently eeking out affection from blocks of ice and stone were Mitaka’s mo. That explained why he was so attached to Phasma. The woman was a tall dominating, stoic thing most of the time but when she let compliments fall from her lips they were earned. Mitaka must have wanted to earn Hux.

  
  


Kylo never was much for earning anything. He had been born into a well off family, he hadn’t needed to earn anything. He hadn’t even needed to work for the force, it had chosen him, he was special, ect, ect. Kylo liked things that came easy.

  
  


All the same there was a strange stab of dark constricting anger when he watched Mitaka reach out and touch Hux. It was different for Hux to touch, to coax out the information he seeked, to place well thought out, strategic words in the man’s ear, then to have Mitaka initiate it.

  
  


It was obvious to him in the sudden stiffness of Hux’s posture that he thought it was different as well. He took Mitaka’s wrist in his hand and removed it from his thigh with a careful, calculated movement.

  
  


There. Finally. Surely Mitaka will see the shift in the man from cold but human and attainable man into the ice demon he actually was. The favour he held for the man would crumble.

  
  


It didn’t.

  
  


If anything Mitaka got a little more flushed and enamoured.

  
  


Hux smiled thinly down at him, held his gaze with those painfully intense eyes of his for a few seconds too long before muttering a ‘thank you’ and moving back towards the door.

  
  


“Tonight?” Mitaka calls after him. Tonight? Was Mitaka throwing himself at Hux? Did he not even know that there were people to hear him? He must know now at least, he had turned around in his seat and was looking right at him.

  
  


Hux doesn’t even turn around, “Maybe.”

  
  


“It’s on Pine and 5th.”

  
  


Pine and 5th? What the hell was at pine and fifth? Mitaka lived up on Murdock on the ridge.

  
  


“Maybe.”

  
  


“I’ll save you a seat.” He calls after them as Hux does his best to herd Kylo out of the station in front of him.

  
  


“What’s on Pine?”

  
  


“Just some bar." Hux waves his hand lazily as if he hadn't just been asked to meet a man at a bar.

  
  


Well man was a bit of a stretch. It was just Mitaka. And well too bad for him that Kylo knew what Hux's type was, and it wasn’t the slight and bashful Mitaka. Then again he had never pegged the sweet man as wanting those kinds of things from a lover. He had assumed, on the very very occasional time he thought about Mitaka as a sexual creature and not just as a scared mouse of a man, that it would be all rose petals and sweet nothings.

  
  


He didn't like thinking of Mitaka in such a way and he certainly didn't like thinking of Hux being the one to provide such a service to him.

  
  


He wasn't sure why he cared, Mitaka would be as good a distraction for the redhead as he would be. Something hurt about that idea though, he wasn't going to dwell.

  
  


He climbed into the car, cringing at the force Hux put behind closing his own door. Kylo ran a gloved hand over the steering wheel as if the gentle caress could counter the violence of Hux. He loved this car more than anything or anyone in the universe.

  
  


It was the only thing from his old life that he had refused to let burn. He knew Snoke thought it foolish to lavish such sentimentality on a hunk of metal, wire and glass but he couldn't help himself.

  
  


It carried with it the only good memories he had of his family, of his life before Snoke and Arkanis, and the one very bad memory that kept him here.

  
  


"Do you know the old quarry up by the Stephen's farm?"

  
  


"Yeah..." He answers slowly, looking at Hux, Kylo's eyes sweep across his features searching for some reaction to Mitaka.

  
  


There isn't one.

  
  


"Good. That's where we are going. According to Mitaka, a lot of the kids camp out there. Glenn might be hiding out there."

  
  


"Well if your boyfriend says so-" he means to say more but he's cut off by a short cruel laugh that falls from Hux's pretty mouth, "So you are just using him then. I'm sure he'd love for you to _use_ him." His voice dips low but Hux just leans over and turns the key in the ignition.

  
  


"Let's go Ren. We have a kid to find and if we have enough time-"

  
  


"The bar?"

  
  


"I was going to say a murder to solve honestly but a pint doesn't sound terrible."

  
  


"Even if you have to pretend to be interested in Mitaka?" He can't help but ask as he drives away from the station and out towards the quarry.

  
  


"I don't have to pretend. My feelings for Mitaka are real."

  
  


Kylo gives him a fair amount of side eye at that, surely he didn't expect him to believe that.

  
  


"I have never said that I feel anything one way or the other for deputy Mitaka, Ren." Beside him Hux clenches his jaw and straightens up as much as the passenger seat allows.

  
  


"You touch every coworker like that?"

  
  


"Jealous?"

  
  


"Course not." He answers maybe a little too slowly, like he really had to think about it. He's pretty sure that’s just as bad as answering too quickly, "Just worried you'll break the poor dears heart is all."

  
  


"You couldn't give a flying fuck if I broke that kids neck let alone heart." Hux twists in his seat as they drive through town, "I think you'd actually quite like if I broke his heart, you'd enjoy if I cut his heart out wouldn't you. You seem the type."

  
  


"What the hell does that mean?"

  
  


Hux shrugs and he can't pull the thoughts from Hux's head properly, all he's getting are overly detailed images of Hux straddling Mitaka and literally cutting his heart out.

  
  


He curses his body for enjoying the look of blood on pale freckled skin.

  
  


It’s the strongest image he has of Hux. Young, maybe fifteen, red hair a mess of copper, his skin pale, tear tracks down his cheeks and blood all over his hands and shirt. Smeared across his cheek.

  
  


He kept forcing the image to age, he had enough problems without being attracted to a kid. His own mind was strong and kept replacing the softer younger features with the hard edges of the deputy but it didn’t stop the force from whispering.

  
  


_I don’t know about this Sul…_

  
  


_Don’t you trust me?_

  
  


_Of course I do_

  
  


Flickers of fumbled inexperienced kisses that didn’t belong to him pressed against his mouth as they left town. He chances a glance at Hux knowing without a doubt that he would despise it if he knew the force was allowing him to experience whoever this Sul kid was. Who he still was to Hux.

  
  


Kylo did everything in his power to push the images and feelings away, to push Sul away and focus on the winding road that lead up to the old quarry.

  
  


Kylo had only been out to the quarry a handful of times but it was still exactly as he remembered it. A hole in the ground.

  
  


Okay it was a large hole in the ground, at least a couple of football fields wide and probably one deep, it’s rocky edges giving the whole place a dangerous look that was completely ruined by the fact that a small group of kids, junior high maybe, was splashing lazily in the rainwater that collected in the basin and never seemed to disappear.

  
  


The butter yellow sunlight and bright greens of the grass that was trying to retake the gaping wound in the earth painted the scene in summer colors. The red striped swimsuits of the girls and bright smiles made the whole place reeked of a Rockwell painting or an after school special.

  
  


He had no idea how he expected to catch a runaway with a scene out of Now and Then, all they were missing was Thora Birch to steal underwear.

  
  


“This is a terrible idea. He’s not here.”

  
  


“It’s a stakeout Ren. They don’t yield results right away.” He pulls the manilla folder out of his glove compartment and spreads the morbid photos across the narrow console between them and starts going over the images making notes in that tiny notebook of his.

  
  


“How long is this going to take?” Kylo asks slumping over the steering wheel and turning off the engine.

  
  


“It takes as long as it takes.”

  
  


“That is such a terrible non answer.”

  
  


“You could help me look though the crime scene photos.” He looks over at Hux and he’s looking up at him over his notes and even he can tell that he doesn’t really mean it.

  
  


“I’m not going to help you with a case that’s not yours to deal with Hux.”

  
  


“You don’t want to catch a child killer?”

  
  


_You don’t want to stop the mayor. Shock._

  
  


“You don’t really think the mayor did that to his own son do you?” Kylo asks fingering a close up of Francis’ face, the bruises and cuts grayscale against white skin. They did love to make the photo’s black and white. A style choice they really had no right to be made. They were crime scene photo’s headed to a dusty bank box in the basement not a gallery.

  
  


He looks up at Hux and has the unfortunate luck to lock eyes with the man. Something in the man's eyes seemed to heighten his connection with the force, or maybe it was something in the way he breathed or moved or just something on an atomic level but the force seemed to love forcing this man's secrets on him.

  
  


Hux, handsome thirtysomething deputy Hux, in his pristine uniform, flickers and shifts again and Kylo can't help the unhappy groan that falls from his mouth as he is dragged bodily into the deputy's past.

  
  


Kylo has always delighted in knowing everyone's secrets but this is getting out of hand. The force really needed to calm the fuck down when it came to Hux.

  
  


He knew it wouldn't.

  
  


The force had always been a very, well, forceful thing, something he couldn't ignore even when he had tried. But it was cranked to eleven when he was near the man.

  
  


_The air freezes in his lungs, whatever horrible tragic things had happened to Hux he really wished they would have been spread out in the year more, all this cold winter air was painful._

  
  


_Hux, seventeen maybe is sitting across from him in the car, prim, proper, well groomed with cuts on his knuckles, on his cheek, bruises around his throat only half covered by a scarf._

  
  


_"Don't go back Hux." The person sitting in his seat tells him, begs, he can feel the anger and fear of this person welled up in his own chest._

  
  


_"Where am I going to go Andersen?" Hux asks with a half smile. He twists and leans against the fogged up window of the car._

  
  


_There's music playing, something slow and classical. Moonlight something. Must be public radio._

  
  


_"You can-"_

  
  


_"Don't." Hux holds up his hand before Andersen can get the words stay with me, out of his mouth. Kylo can feel them stuck in his throat._

  
  


_"Bren..." Andersen's voice comes out in a slow desperate sound, "I can't keep seeing you like this... What he does to you. It's wrong."_

  
  


_"It doesn't matter. I'll be at West Point soon." Hux is so resigned to his fate. A fate that has obviously been filled with someone's iron fist._

  
  


_"It does matter damn it!" Kylo can hear himself yell through the vision because God damn it, it does matter. That bastard has gotten away with so much he doesn't get to get away with this too, "I’m going to do something. I'm going to tell someone."_

  
  


_A startled laugh falls from Hux's cruel beautiful mouth, "Why on earth are you getting so worked up."_

  
  


_"Because I-" Andersen bites his tongue and shifts as far back into his seat as he can, "You know why Bren."_

  
  


_Hux leans across the console keeping them separated, his fingers are warm as they brush across his cheek._

  
  


_"I told you not to fall in love with me." Hux laughs softly, brushing hair away from his forehead with fingers that burn. His face is so close all he'd have to do is lean up ever so slightly and he could claim the man's mouth._

  
  


_But this isn't the man he wants. This Hux is too young and while something dark lingers in his eyes it isn't the same powerful pulling thing his Hux has._

  
  


_"It should have been easy Andersen. I'm an asshole. You know what I've done."_

  
  


_"The Commandant's Cadets Initiation is just a legend Bren... A scary bedtime story to keep cadets in line."_

  
  


_"Whatever you need to tell yourself Andersen." Andersen's hands move up and pull the loosely wrapped scarf away from Hux's pale manhandled neck._

  
  


_Hands that do and do not belong to Kylo touch the tender flesh there._

  
  


_"Stay with me Hux. I can keep you safe."_

  
  


_"Haven't you heard Lieutenant? No one is safe from a Hux."_

  
  


_It was hard to swallow and the air felt warmer with Hux so close, it was hard to focus on anything other than how close the boy’s face was and he desperately wanted to know who this lieutenant was, to know how often this happened to Hux, it had to be often for him to treat it with such a blase attitude._

  
  


_Hux looks like a predator. Like a fox or a wolf, his red hair shimmering in the blue light of the winter night, the bruises and cuts on his skin made him look like a fighter as he closes the minimal distance between them._

  
  


_Kylo wets his lips and closes his eyes, waiting for the blissful pressure from the younger Hux._

  
  


_There is a violent sound of unyielding metal yielding and his eyes snap open as the weight of Hux leaning on his chest suddenly gone._

  
  


_He turns quickly to see the car door ripped open and Hux's long legs being dragged away._

  
  


"Bren!" The name rips from his throat and he rushes out of the car into the hot summer air.

  
  


The weight of the vision slams down on him and he falls to his knees in the grass beside the car.

  
  


He looks around wildly somehow still expecting to find teenage Hux being dragged away from the car.

  
  


A pair of legs stop in front of him, that terrible tan of the sheriff's department and shining black shoes.

  
  


Hux.

  
  


He looks up but the world around him flickers into the blue grey of a winter night, the air freezing painfully around him.

  
  


_The man standing above him isn't Hux._

  
  


_Isn't his Hux. Not at any age._

  
  


_The man is larger, wider, he seems to take up the entire world, a gruff but well trimmed beard, sharp lines of a heavy peacoat and shining leather gloves._

  
  


_The red hair is greying._

  
  


_"What is wrong with you Cadet." The man is looking slightly to the left and when he looks left he finds teenage Hux, with his jacket missing and the bruises around his neck vivid as the cold steals the color from his pale skin._

  
  


_Hux is trying to straighten up, to grab at some dignity._

  
  


_There is yelling from behind them and when he looks back towards the car he sees the lieutenant red faced and afraid in his rumpled uniform. It's a small relief to see that the man is young, not much older than twenty, that dark hair and dark eyed combination again, no surprise there._

  
  


_"Please sir, Hux didn't do anything! It's my fault. I-"_

  
  


_"Silence cadet." The young man falls silent as someone who must be Hux's father turns his attention back to Hux. Who is kneeling in the snow his head held high, "I thought I broke you of this little habit of yours."_

  
  


_"My sexuality isn't a habit Commandant."_

  
  


_"I'm not talking about you being gay." The older man hisses, there is ice cold venom in his voice, "I meant your little habit of fucking your roommates." He growls and Kylo looks back to the stricken Lt. He was awfully young, perhaps the age difference wasn't as large as he had first thought if they had been roommates at some point._

  
  


_Hux somehow has the courage to smirk and look pleased with himself at the remark._

  
  


_"It hasn't been that many."_

  
  


_"What number is this one? Five?"_

  
  


_"It might be."_

  
  


_It must be five then. Kylo doesn't know what he expects from the Lt but he doesn't look surprised by hearing this, just concerned, scared still but the fear isn't for him._

  
  


_It's for Hux._

  
  


_He's not sure why. Hux seems to have a handle on this._

  
  


_At least it looks that way until the Commandant leans over and wraps his hand around his son’s neck, the hand perfectly covering the bruises, and lifts Hux up off the snow._

  
  


_Andersen rushes forward and Kylo finds himself looking away as a spray of red hits the blue tinted snow._

  
  


He feels sick.

  
  


He promptly loses his waffles all over the ground, splattering the shinning black of Hux's shoes.

  
  


He looks up through tear rimmed eyes to thankfully see Hux,proper Hux, bathed in sunlight looking down with him with something wavering between concern and annoyance.

  
  


The concern must win whatever war was going on in the storm of Hux's mind because he moves to the side, rubbing his shoes clean on the grass before settling down in the grass beside Ren and pulling his hair carefully away from his face as another wave of sickness crashed over him.

  
  


"You shouldn't have shoved all those waffles in your face like you'd never see food again." Hux tells him a hand on his back and his fingers tangled in his hair keeping it out of the splash zone.

  
  


The hand doesn't move in small circles to comfort his convulsing body. It's just heavy and oddly cool against his back. He wonders between bouts of sick if Hux even knows how to comfort anyone, if all his knowledge of human connection, of comfort and safety comes from those terribly dull books.

  
  


He looks down at the mess he's made in the grass and is beyond pleased to see that rather than blood on snow.

  
  


Kylo loved learning other people's secrets, he loved ripping them open like a book, to have everything dark and untoward laid bare for him but when he rocks back onto his heels and looks at Hux, with exertion tears in his eyes, he thinks that he'd like for Hux's tragic past to keep to its fucking self.

  
  


He had never seen a man so put together on the outside and such a fucking mess on the inside. Anyone so emotionally scarred as this man.

  
  


Kylo's hand lifted of its own accord and his fingers grazed softly across the man's smooth, unmarred neck.

  
  


"What are you doing Ren?"

  
  


The man's cool fingers wrapped around his hand, his grip firm but unmoving.

  
  


"Bren..." The name, the nickname, endearment, whatever it was, slips from his mouth as he looks up into the man's painfully bright eyes.

  
  


Hux's grip on his hand tightens and pulls Ren easily off, his fingers slipping from his neck. Years and years ago there had been fingerprints bruised into the soft skin there and Ren finds it odd that he wishes the force allowed him to take that pain away.

  
  


"What did you call me?" Hux's voice is low and has a dangerous edge to it.

  
  


The tone sends a chill through him that is not as unpleasant as it really should be.

  
  


"I don't know..."

  
  


The man's eyes narrow and if looks could kill Hux would probably already have seen the electric chair by now. This look most certainly burned all the same. The glare was dark and deep, it sliced through him like he was searching for something.

  
  


"Why did you call me that?"

  
  


"Isn't it just a short form for your name?" He offers trying to appease the man. Something he's never tried with anyone else before. He realizes he's not even sure what Hux's first name actually is. Brendan maybe? God he hopes he doesn't ask.

  
  


Hux was all at once an unknown and terrifyingly known.

  
  


"No one calls me that anymore." Hux stands up, not as gracefully as he could have. Something on his side, an injury that hasn't healed right keeps the motion awkward and off-centre. Hux brushes off his pants even though there is no grass stuck to him, "Don't call me that Ren."

  
  


Hux turns sharply and goes back to the car and Kylo has the strangest feeling that he's lost something he never had to begin with.

  
  


 


	7. Zero Tolerance

 

 

The hours in Ren's car stretched tediously as he tried to focus on anything but the man beside him and how _Bren_ had actually sounded rather nice coming from him.

  
  


He hadn't been called Bren in years. He's fairly certain Andersen had been the last one to call him that. He had been the last a lot of things really. He didn't even want to think about how sad it was that he had been his last lover.

  
  


Fuck that had been a lifetime ago.

  
  


Did he even remember what to do with his body any more?

  
  


He glanced across the car at Ren before berating himself for it.

  
  


If Hux was a mess, and in all honesty he very much was, then Ren was an episode of Horders. And he wanted nothing to do with that. They'd find Glenn, they (he'd) expose the mayor as the killer he was and then they would hopefully never have to deal with each other again.

  
  


His life was a shit show without the man's histrionics. He had moved to this town for one reason, to get away from this level of drama.

  
  


Okay that wasn't true. He'd taken this position because he had heard that Snoke was practically on his deathbed and that sweeping in and winning the sheriff position would be easy. Hux looked down at the glossy photo's and wondered however briefly if maybe Ren wasn't as crazy as he seemed and maybe this was destiny or something like that.

  
  


He couldn't save Sul, or Andersen, or that boy from his office and he couldn't save Francis either, but maybe he could bring some sort of justice to this obviously corrupt town.

  
  


Ren shifts in his seat and Hux's eyes are instantly glued to the man. Eyes flitting about his face searching for some sort of ailment, some strange sickness that the man had.

  
  


Surely something was wrong with him if he was built like he was, strong and somehow holding a place of fear in the hearts of most of the townsfolk, and still swoon like he did.

  
  


This last bout of his affliction had been the worst so far, perhaps it had to do with the amount of waffles he had stuffed in his face that morning.

  
  


A part of him didn't really believe that.

  
  


He was actively ignoring that part.

  
  


His partnership with Ren would be so much easier to pin down if he knew any important information about the man.

  
  


Stakeouts, so he had heard, were excellent situations to bond in. Hux didn't know much about that kind of shit. It seemed that Ren didn't either. He had been sitting quietly in the driver seat for hours now the only vocalisations he made to complain about the radio under his breath before he searched through the dial for something that didn't offend him.

  
  


It had been hours and they had nothing to show for it.

  
  


Teenagers moved through the quarry like a revolving door sure but none of them matched the picture of Glenn. This was a bust.

  
  


“This is a bust.” Ren complains slumping over the steering wheel. The newly risen moon is throwing pale blue light across Ren’s sharp features.

  
  


“It’s a stakeout. They take time Ren.” He decidedly does not note the way the moonlight bathes the man’s surprisingly pale skin in an almost ethereal way, his strategic mind spinning haphazardly through uses for the information pertaining to Ren’s odd beauty. He looks like a fairytale princess like that, his dark hair splayed lazily across everything, his stark white skin, inky eyes and plush mouth like an illustration out of a children’s book. He doesn’t know what good this information does him but he’s logging it all the same.

  
  


Ren must find the position uncomfortable because he shifts uneasily and moves back, far into the corner or his seat.

  
  


He’s blushing.

  
  


Probably heatstroke.

  
  


Hux glanced around the car, “Do you have anything to drink?” He was sorely regretting not preparing for this stakeout other than bringing the pilfered files with him.

  
  


Ren gave a small sigh before he moved forward and leaning against Hux’s seat and fished around behind him.

  
  


Definitely heatstroke. He could feel the warmth rolling off the man like a palpable thing. Ren’s black sweater he noticed now as it rested so close to him was worn thin, the hand he had pressed by Hux’s head was large and powerful looking sure but what he noticed more than anything was that the cuff of the sweater didn’t sit quite right. It was too short. He didn’t need to feel it to know that it had once been an expensive and well made sweater so many years ago.

  
  


Ren had fallen from grace it seemed.

  
  


Perhaps Arkanis was just where those people ended up. His fall from grace had landed him here as well after all.

  
  


When Ren finds what he’s looking for he let out a small pleased sound and pulled the rest of his body back into the front of the car. He leaned against the dashboard and with a large grin splitting his face he held out a brown bottle to Hux.

  
  


“What is that?”

  
  


It was in no way the abandoned half bottle of coke he had thought it would be.

  
  


“It’s beeeeer.” He pulls out the word like he’s not sure Hux understands the concept and to prove it further he continues with a smirk, “A fermented drink, hops, barley…”

  
  


“I know what it is Ren. Why do you have it in your car.” He ask trying to keep the growl in his voice to a minimum.He’s not sure he’s succeeding because the brunette twists the top off with his sweater sleeve. He has to get his arm really up there in order to get enough cloth to separate his hand from the metal teeth but he succeeds.

  
  


“You wanted something to drink.” He offers Hux the bottle but he pulls away with a grimace, “Oh do you only drink fancy stuff in glasses? Whiskey’s old enough to order their own whiskey, whatever the hell brandy is.”

  
  


“Whatever the hell bra- no. I don’t want any because I’m on duty Ren.” He let out more flustered than he’d like.

  
  


But that seemed to be the way with Ren. He longed for the well defined relationships of his past, with Hux as the clear alpha, unflappable, untouchable, in control. Everything had felt just out of reach of him since he’d seen Francis’ body pooling blood across those pale tiles.

  
  


Ren went to put the bottle to his mouth and in a quick movement he didn’t even realize he had made he had his hand pressed to the bottle opening. His hand now trapped between the hard smooth rim of the bottle and Ren’s wet mouth.

  
  


“If you drink that you aren’t driving.” He tells him firmly, ignoring the heat high in his cheeks.

  
  


Ren’s mouth moves slowly away from his skin, raises until it is barely above his skin, he can still feel his hot breath against his now damp skin.

  
  


“You are not driving my car.”

  
  


“Then you aren’t drinking. It’s as simple as that. This county is zero tolerance.”

  
  


“No one's stopped me before.” Ren is still dipped over the bottle, hot breath tickling his skin, sending tiny shockwaves of feeling up his arm. He’s looking at him through long dark lashes and he can’t figure out how Ren can look so delicate and powerful at the same time.

  
  


Why hasn’t he moved his hand.

  
  


The smile or smirk, it’s hard to tell at this angle, that Ren gives him over the bottle makes it hard to swallow. Ren is trying to push him, staring at him trying to assert dominance over him.

  
  


It hadn’t worked on his cat and it certainly wasn’t going to work on him.

  
  


He hardens his features, forces the heat out of his skin and drains the warmth from his eyes turning to ice.

  
  


Hux isn’t sure what Ren is going to do now but he won’t be drinking and he certainly won’t win a dominance contest with him.

  
  


Hux had worked hard for everything he had ever gotten a little pushing from this sycophant wasn’t going to move him.

  
  


At least that’s what he thought.

  
  


Ren’s tongue runs hot, slick and pointed between his fingers, up along the seam between his closed fingers with obscene intent.

  
  


Hux yelps and throws his hand back away from the offending man. The bottle can’t seem to decide on which man it wants to stay with and ends up jumping between the two and spilling across them both. Ren jumps and smacks his head on the roof of the car.

  
  


Inventive curses flood the car and Hux tries to manhandle Ren back onto his side of the car but the man is all gangly limbs and the beer is everywhere.

  
  


There is a heavy knock on the glass of his passenger side window and confused he cranks the window down (a crank window, seriously how useless was this stupid car).

  
  


Deputy Phasma is leaning down and peering into the car with her flashlight.

  
  


“Deputy, Kylo.” Phasma’s voice is smooth and rich. She sounds too good for this shit.

  
  


She’s probably thinking exactly that looking at the pair of them tangled up and doused in beer.

  
  


“Deputy.”

  
  


“Phas.”

  
  


“If you needed some private time, you might consider an actual private place next time.” She rolls her eyes and straightens to her full mountainous height.

  
  


Hux leans down in order to actually see her face while he pushes ‘Kylo’ violently away from him.

  
  


“We’re on a stakeout.”

  
  


“Those tend to work a lot better when the entire quarry isn’t watching Kylo and your’s peep show.” She taps her flashlight on the roof of the car, “Move along. I don’t care where you go but you can’t stay here so they say.” She sighs heavily and turns away from them to get back into her cruiser.

  
  


“We weren’t-” Hux mutters to himself even though no one is listening.

  
  


The car starts up and Hux looks quickly at Kylo… What kind of a name is Kylo anyway? Norwegian? Celtic? It reinforced the image of a princess a little too well, “What are you doing?”

  
  


Kylo doesn’t look at him but the blush is rampant on his face, spreading to the ears peeking out under his shiny black hair, “I’m taking you home and then I’m going home to shower and watch sixteen candles.”

  
  


“We have a kid to find.” He decides not to question sixteen candles.

  
  


“Wherever Glenn is, I doubt he’ll be moving until morning. Buckle up for safety deputy.”

  
  


——

  
  


Somewhere in this town Kylo Ren was watching Molly Ringwald hate her life.

  
  


Or he might be showering…

  
  


No.

  
  


No. Hux was not going to lay here in bed and think about that man…naked…wet…nope.

  
  


Hux had always prided himself on his restraint and focus and he had more important things to do tonight than think about the warmth of a man he could barely stand.

  
  


He stared down at his open laptop, Millie’s tail sweeping over the keyboard and his hands in a lazy comforting rhythm. He had finished up typing his notes from today. There hadn’t been very many. Kylo had been right hours ago. It was a bust. He had very little to show for it, some vague information gathered on Mr. ‘Kylo’ Ren and a note here and there about the kids that had flitted in and out of the quarry. The chatter in the cars around them about how horrible it was, what happened to Franny (not the most flattering nickname one could have. Hux could relate a little more than he’d like. Before he had entered the Commandant's cadets people had taken to calling him Dolly). The thing that had struck him most of all was how many of the kids had gossiped about how if Franny had just left with Glenn he’d still be alive.

  
  


He would have to go back through all of Glenn’s things again to see if he could find anything about a plan for the pair of them to leave together. Perhaps Glenn was out there on the edges of town waiting for his not as secret as he probably should have been boyfriend to meet him.

  
  


It was really the only thing that made any sense, what else could keep Glenn here but not bring him all the way back to the warmth of his bed.

  
  


A part of him ached at the thought of Glenn out there in the woods somewhere worrying over what was keeping Francis so long. He probably didn’t even know the kid was dead.

  
  


He’d just have to bring him home.

  
  


Hux closes the file and opens a different window, he had something that had been bothering him that he was sure he could fix tonight.

  
  


He opens up a search and types in : Kylo Ren

  
  


It’s a bunch of news articles.

  
  


The Rebel, the Arkanis newspaper.

  
  


A handful of articles written by P. Dameron.

  
  


He opens them all in separate windows to read later, the oldest article was ten years old. There had to be something somewhere older than that. Where were the old blogs, or science fair articles, where were the hilarious school pictures. He sits up straighter ignoring Millicent’s hissing protests and leans into his laptop.

  
  


He has more things at his disposal then just google, and he digs up military databases and uses old colleagues information (Bevven hadn’t changed his password. No surprise there the man was convinced that his son’s birthday was the perfect code).

  
  


He finds nothing.

  
  


No information at all.

  
  


He calls in a late night favour from Agent Andersen. Nothing in central intelligence on the man.

  
  


Kylo Ren is a ghost.

  
  


He devours the information that P. Dameron provides about the young stranger. The kid, fifteen, had shown up in the middle of the night in that piece of shit car, with blood on his clothes and was taken in by the sheriff.

  
  


Sheriff Snoke.

  
  


No wonder Kylo was considered Snoke’s pet, his favourite punishment. If Snoke said jump Kylo wouldn’t even bother to ask how high. He feels like there's some sort of psychic joke that should go here but he’s too tired. He had barely slept the night before, pouring over the crime scene photos he’d weaseled out of Mitaka.

  
  


The articles go on and on, bouts of violence, assault charges that according to his access to the sheriff’s department database never went anywhere. Articles about gangs driven out of town before they could even set up shop, about corruption that centered on the mayor and Snoke and Kylo.

  
  


The more he read the more Kylo felt unreal. He read like some mystical ‘fixer’, a man that you didn’t want to be in a room alone with. He imagined Kylo standing in a doorway to some poor man’s office, the look of utter fear when Kylo stepped in and closed the door. If the news articles were right he wouldn’t need to lock it.

  
  


Kylo Ren was the gauntlet on the arm of the law in this town.

  
  


Pale, black shadow, swooning Ren.

  
  


He couldn’t mesh the ideas together.

  
  


Maybe he was just too tired for this.

  
  


Hux closed his laptop and plugged it in before shuffling down into his bed. He stared at the ceiling of the tiny studio apartment, waiting for the orange glow of headlights to streak across the ceiling, waiting for the sounds of civilization, cars, people, anything.

  
  


The room stayed dark and the night stayed quiet and still.

  
  


He wondered how long it would take to adjust to a small town like this. It was better than thinking about Francis Fallen, or Glenn Curtis or Kylo Ren at least.

  
  


-

  
  


The knock on his door seems to come too early.

  
  


He’s not sure he slept at all. Just laid there thinking about the ghost that was Kylo Ren, wondering where he really came from, what he was doing here, anything.

  
  


Just laying in his uncomfortable bed in the too dark nowhere, so far from civilization, culture, wondering why he decided that this was the place for him.

  
  


The knocking is incessant, it must be Kylo Ren then.

  
  


He didn’t know who it could possibly be otherwise. Mitaka knew where he lived but there was no way he would knock so hard, or even have the courage to come. Not after he had removed the man’s hand from his thigh and hadn’t gone to the bar last night.

  
  


“Come on Gingersnap! Let’s roll out!”

  
  


“Shut up.” He wants to be sharper and smarter than that but he just can’t do it. He needs coffee. He needs a fucking lead. He doesn’t even care which case anymore.

  
  


There is thankfully not a lot of apartment to get through to get to the door. He whips it open, takes a second to hate how Kylo is even awake and moves back into the apartment.

  
  


“Holy shit, that didn’t take long.”

  
  


“What didn’t take long?” Hux asks opening his wardrobe and staring at the uniforms.

  
  


“For you to lose your shining edge. The town got to you faster than I thought it would.” Hux glances over his shoulder to Ren, he’s in another staring contest with his cat, “You shouldn’t lose sleep over this case deputy.”

  
  


“It wasn’t the case.” He grumbles into the cedar scented wardrobe taking out the clothes he needs and tossing them onto the unmade bed. Thankfully Ren seems too involved trying to display his dominance over Millie to notice.

  
  


It was ridiculous, she was a cat, she wasn’t going to fall for such ridiculous tricks, she was a cat.

  
  


Hux pulls his pajama top up over his head and he can hear a sputter of sound. He looks over at Kylo who has lost his interest in Millie to stare at him.

  
  


“Is something wrong Ren?” He wishes he didn’t feel as smug as he does, he doesn’t want to give a shit if Ren finds him attractive but his heart speeds up a little and he can feel a heat high in his cheeks at the unabashed gawking.

  
  


“Uh… scar.” Kylo points and Hux looks down at his side and traces the lines marring his skin, not quite faded yet.

  
  


“Oh. Yeah.” He grabs his shirt and pulls it on, buttoning the tan over pale skin, he hates that scar, that reminder of how filled with death his life was, how cursed he was.

  
  


“You saw active duty then?” Ren asks his voice sounds lower than usual. Foggy almost.

  
  


“I wasn’t on tour when it happened if that’s what you’re asking.”

  
  


“How…” When he looks back at Kylo, buttoning his last button, the man has his hand still extended as if he wants to touch him.

  
  


“Mail bomb. I’d rather not talk about it.”

  
  


Just another thing on the list of things they weren’t going to talk about. He wondered briefly if this counted as a new topic or if it fell under the general topic of ‘before Arkanis’.

  
  


“Uh… Sure.”

  
  


Hux started to pull down his pajama pants his eyes on Ren, the shade he turned as his eyes grew large was terribly enjoyable, “Is there a problem Ren?”

  
  


“No.” Ren tells him quickly and turns around to stare at his kitchen (maybe kitchen was a little too generous, kitchenette was probably more accurate. He couldn’t wait until a more suitable place opened up in town), “Do you, do you want to get waffles?” Kylo asks his fridge door.

  
  


Shaking his head a little to himself he finishes changing, “How can you think about waffles when you vomited them all up just yesterday.”

  
  


“That had nothing to do with the waffles. That was a side effect of my vision.”

  
  


“Oh? Vision?” He doesn’t bother to try and hide the dry disbelief, “What did you see then Jean Grey?” Hux grabs a tin of cat food out of one of the few cabinets and locks eyes with Kylo for a moment before turning his attention to feeding his cat.

  
  


“Would you believe me if I said you?”

  
  


There is something strange in his tone, timid, almost nervous.

  
  


“No.”

  
  


“I didn’t think so. The vision wasn’t about Glenn or Franny so let’s just go get some coffee. You look like you need it.”

  
  


“I need to fix my hair, then we can go.” He brushes past Kylo in the least antagonising way he can manage with his stiff posture and steps into the small bathroom to fix his hair. He may have heard the other man mumble that he looked better this way,staring into the mirror at his tired messy reflection he can’t see how that could be true. He hasn’t looked this wrecked in years and certainly not in front of anyone.

  
  


He wonders, as he slicks back his hair, if Kylo realises what a rare occurrence this is.

  
  


-

  
  


The diner isn’t nearly as enlightening this time around, Finn isn’t working today. He’ll be visiting Poe in the hospital then.

  
  


Hux wonders if he should go and see Poe at the hospital as well.

  
  


He seemed to be the only one with any sort of handle of who Kylo Ren was.

  
  


And to say he wasn’t interested in what exactly had gotten him on the wrong end of Kylo’s fists would be a blatant lie. In a small town like this there was no way it wasn’t connected in at least some way to what was going on here.

  
  


The station is another story altogether, unfortunately.

  
  


When he walks in Kylo trailing behind complaining about burnt toast (they burnt it on purpose Hux!), the room suddenly grows quiet.

  
  


Too quiet.

  
  


And everyone but the mountainous Phasma is looking at them.

  
  


_Oh god._

  
  


Mitaka looks at him with wet eyes.

  
  


_Shit._

  
  


“I’m surprised you managed to drag yourself into work this morning Hux. You must be losing your edge Kylo.”

  
  


“We did not-” Hux sweeps his cold hard eyes over the group of deputies and sighs, “There is no point in denying it is there. No matter what’s true.”

  
  


Kylo, as if he thrives to make everything just a little but worse, throws his arm over Hux’s shoulders and whispers into his ear, “I promise you if we did what they think we did, you wouldn’t be able to walk today.”

  
  


He brushes Kylo off him and walks as proudly as possible across the room of gossips to his desk. He highly doubts it anyway. The way Kylo blushed when he had taken off his shirt and how he had had to turn away from him when he had changed his pants? He just screams virgin.

  
  


“What do you want me to do?” Kylo asks leaning against his desk smirking down at him as he pulls out his paperwork.

  
  


“As little as possible honestly.” He boots up his computer and refuses to look at the dark haired man, “I don’t know Kylo,” he sighs heavily, “Go talk to your spirit animal or something.”

  
  


With an angry huff of noise Kylo left, knocking over a garbage bin on his way out.

  
  


“You shouldn’t anger him Hux…” Mitaka tells him, voice low and nervous. Soft, heartbroken. If Hux still had a heart he’d feel bad for Mitaka.

  
  


A heavy hand landed on Hux’s shoulder and he looked up to find Phasma towering over him again, “Don’t worry darling, Kylo wouldn’t hurt red here. He’s sweet on him.”

  
  


Hux shrugs her off his shoulder and tries to focus on his paperwork, “He isn’t sweet on me.”

  
  


“Sure he’s not. Watch. I’d bet he’ll be back before end of shift.”

  
  


For the sake of his reputation, and Mitaka’s wavering allegiance he really hoped that Phasma was wrong.

  
  


 


	8. Glenn Curtis

 

Kylo wasn't sure exactly why he was so upset about how Hux had brushed him off.

  
  


They had only known each other for three days.

  
  


Sure the force surged from the red head like a current, trying to drag him under. Sure he had been drowning in scenes for Hux's terrifying past but they weren't friends.

  
  


And they certainly weren't more than that.

  
  


Hux's little display of getting changed in front of him made it more than clear that he didn't think of Kylo as a potential partner. A potential nuisance, a potential lunatic but certainly not a potential lover.

  
  


Kylo sat in the dark of his living room, the light from the TV bathing the room in inconsistent colors.

  
  


It had been three days since he had seen Hux.

  
  


Three days since he had worked the Glenn Curtis case (why even bother, the kid should get as far away from this hell hole as possible while he still could), three days since he had left his house.

  
  


It had been five or six days since he had really slept.

  
  


He had been given a job, distract Hux, but he hadn't gotten a single message from Snoke suggesting that he get back to it.

  
  


He could only assume that Hux had thrown himself into finding Glenn.

  
  


Kylo hoped he enjoyed the wild goose chase, although he felt a little bad that Hux seemed to be drawn to this kind of shit.

  
  


Tragic young men.

  
  


Birds of a feather maybe? Because every memory, every vision and dip into Hux(Bren)'s mind was drenched in blood and tragedy.

  
  


How did the man even function?

  
  


Had the force brought the red head here to show Kylo that he wasn't alone in his personal tragedy? It worked in mysterious ways after all. It had brought him here after he had killed Ben Solo.

  
  


Maybe it was just Arkanis itself that attracted people like them.

  
  


Kylo pushes himself off the couch and staggers up the stairs.

  
  


He must really need some sleep if he's romanticising this town, imagining a connection between himself and Hux.

  
  


He must be lonely.

  
  


Kylo falls into bed, not bothering to change and dares sleep to come.

  
  


Dares the universe to send him a vision, to send him dreams, dares it.

  
  


With the little bit of focus he has left he waves his hand in the air lazily and listens to the door slam shut on the opposite side of the room.

  
  


One of these days he'd make a believer out of Bren. It would have to be something really impressive he was sure. Stopping bullets in mid air, whispering the future into his ear, undressing him from across the room...

  
  


His vague ideas of showing off his force skills devolve into images of Hux's lean body, the hidden power in his lithe form, trailing his fingers across the lines of his scars, his imagination (or maybe the force) filling in the blanks of the man's body he had been too shy to catalogue himself.

  
  


The sleep is heavy and deep and filled with little vignettes of Hux writhing under his attention.

  
  


It's probably the best sleep he's had in years.

  
  


Kylo sits up in bed happily, yawning and stretching in the soft blue of the early morning. The bed shift under him and confused he looks beside him and finds a bundle of blankets that is most definitely a person.

  
  


He doesn't remember...

  
  


Is he blacking out again...

  
  


He'd gone to bed alone he knew that, _knew_ it.

  
  


With a hand that shakes more than he would ever admit, he pulls the blankets down away from the person's head and his heart stops.

  
  


Soft looking ginger hair. Brilliant red against the pale blue of his sheets.

  
  


_Hux?_

  
  


He tries to force the words out of his throat but can't quite manage it.

  
  


_No. No way._

  
  


Flashes of the dreams come slamming to the front of his mind. They were dreams right... They were. They weren't memories...

  
  


Had Hux come over in the middle of the night for something? Something about the case maybe? Needed his very narrow expertise? Did they have a couple of drinks and fall into bed together?

  
  


A panic settles around him, ice cold warring against the heat of the blankets.

  
  


He puts his hand on a pale narrow shoulder, not as muscled as he remembers...

  
  


The man grumbles and shift under his hand, turning into the bed until he turns to look up at Kylo and he's honestly not sure if this is better or worse because it isn't Hux at all.

  
  


Glenn Curtis.

  
  


Barely seventeen year old Glenn Curtis is in his bed.

  
  


Worse.

  
  


Definitely worse.

  
  


If this was any other town in the country he would be seriously worried about the legal ramifications of whatever the hell is going on here.

  
  


He can't wait to tell Hux that he's solved his little missing persons case though.

  
  


He absolutely won't tell him how though.

  
  


Had Glenn let him call him Hux... Because he definitely remembers moaning out the deputies name last night.

  
  


_"I wish you didn't have to go." The words fall from his mouth without him thinking about it. They sound strange, too high, they don't have his cadences at all. They sound too intellectual, the words rounded instead of sharp and brutal and low._

  
  


_Glenn looks up at him smiling, reaching up and running a hand through hair that doesn't feel right, "Soon we won't have to part again."_

  
  


_"Together..." His voice comes out wistful and he's a hundred percent sure he has never sounded wistful in his life._

  
  


_He looks across the room to a mirror that shouldn't be there to find he isn't himself. Franny is looking back at him._

  
  


_"Together always."  Glenn tells him with the brightest smile he had ever seen on the kid before, "You all packed?"_

  
  


_"I just have a couple of things I need to do first..." Kylo looks towards the closet, he can see a half packed bag sticking out from under some junk._

  
  


_"You don't need to get that money Frankie. We can make due with what I already have hidden at home." Glenn's fingers trail lovingly across Kylo-Franny's skin._

  
  


_"I can do it. If I can get the money from dad's safe then we can really be gone. We can move far away from this shit hole and never have to come back." There's a firmness in Franny's voice he's never heard there before in all his interactions with the mayor's meek son._

  
  


_"If you're sure Frank."_

  
  


_"I'm sure. With Poe in the hospital this is the only way to get that extra cash."_

  
  


_Poe? What did he have to do with this?_

  
  


_He looks down at Glenn and can feel himself bending and with a tightness in his stomach Francis/Kylo kisses Glenn softly._

  
  


_Like the lovers the entire town knew they were._

  
  


_"You know the plan right."_

  
  


_"Of course." Glenn rolls his eyes, "I'm going to miss you."_

  
  


_"It’s only for a week. You disappear, I'll meet you out by old man Kallies farm with the money and the car and we are out of this hellhole."_

  
  


_Glenn is carding his fingers through Kylo's hair, Franny's hair, and smiles softly, "If there was a bright point in the galaxy-"_

  
  


_"We are the furthest from it. But we won't be for long darling."_

  
  


_"I love you so much Frankie."_

  
  


_"I love you too."_

  
  


_They finally get out of bed, Francis watches Glenn pull on his clothes and climb half out the window._

  
  


_"I'll miss you." Glenn tells him._

  
  


_"It's only for a week and then we'll be together..."_

  
  


_"Always." Glenn answers and slips out of the window._

  
  


The light changes around Kylo, it shifts into the dark of the night again and he sits there in his bed, on top of the covers, fully dressed and tries to hold back tears.

  
  


Everything in him aches.

  
  


-

  
  


He tries to shower off the dull ache in his body but it doesn't really help.

  
  


He knows that Glenn is out there waiting for a person that will never come and he's surprised to actually care.

  
  


What was it about this case that made him care?

  
  


He had never really cared for either Glenn or Franny and yet here he was getting force visions of the last time they had seen each other going over and over in his head everything they had said to each other.

  
  


It was Hux wasn’t it.

  
  


The force favoured the man somehow even though he was obviously as force sensitive as a brick. But his arrival matched up nicely to when the force had started to play fast and loose with his mind. What did the force care about Hux?

  
  


Hux was damaged, he couldn’t help but think as he wiped a stripe across the steamed up mirror.

  
  


Hux was damaged in that way that had him desperately clinging to his shiny, perfect, lies. He could fool Mitaka and the rest of Arkanis but he couldn’t lie to Kylo. He was a hurricane in human form, just like him.

  
  


Maybe the force took a special interest in the type of broken that he and Hux were.

  
  


Closing his eyes he tried to meditate, tried to push away the distractions of the world, push away the sights and smells, everything, tried to bring himself to a calm blank place and focus on the will of the force.

  
  


Eisley’s.

  
  


There was a pull in his gut towards the bar in town, Eisley’s on Pine, in his mind he could see that deep red stain in the force, almost blood, almost his stupid hair.

  
  


Somehow someone had convinced Hux to go to the bar tonight and he had to go and convince him to go with him to pick up Glenn at old man Kellis’ farm.

  
  


Dressing quickly he grabs his keys and heads out to solve Hux’s stupid mystery.

  
  


-

  
  


The neon orange sign for Eisley’s flickers and hums obnoxiously as he walks in. It’s the same greasy, dirty, local bar in every small town, with booths so old the leather is cracked and irreparable, a jukebox older than him sits lopsided in the far corner between bathroom doors. If he remembers correctly the stupid machine never plays Bauhaus, it was like the album was in there just to taunt him. No matter the amount of coins, which kind, old or new, or how much of the force he tried to push into the hunk of junk it liked to play Dick Dale instead.

  
  


The bar is silent for a long moment as he stands there looking around at it’s inhabitants. The mayor and a few of his lackey’s sit in a corner booth nursing a couple of bottles of wine, a lackey moves away from the jukebox to return to his seat next to the mayor, blue oyster cult, the standard smattering of old men, and husbands not ready to go home yet, the doctor, the lawyer, all stare at him worriedly, the fear palpable in the stale beer air.

  
  


Hux is sitting sandwiched into a booth by Phasma, Mitaka and Thannison across from them enjoying a couple of beers before heading home. Well everyone but Hux is at least. Hux is sitting the corner of the booth, trying to be sociable drinking a tumbler half full of amber liquid.

  
  


When they notice him as well everyone goes silent, one side of the table dead silent, breath held, backs too straight, scared.

  
  


At least someone was because Phasma and Hux look relaxed and annoyed. Phasma relaxed, Hux annoyed. He supposed Hux had enjoyed the three days of his absence. He had probably gotten a lot of work done.

  
  


Boring.

  
  


“Thanisson move over.” Phasma must kick him under the table because he the man yelps and proceeds to squash Mitaka into the wall. Sweet, meek, desperate, submissive Mitaka, so that he is directly across from Hux. He doesn’t like it.

  
  


Hux is smiling at Mitaka and shaking his head, they seem to have some silent communication going on and it bother him that it’s happened in just three days.

  
  


They weren’t fucking were they?

  
  


A sudden boil to his blood makes the bottles on the table quiver and shake. Phasma shakes her head at him and lifts her bottle off the table while the two men across from her shiver in fear. Hux just sighs.

  
  


Kylo sits heavily down on the bench enjoying the amount of room Thanisson has given him, he must be crushing Mitaka into the wall.

  
  


“We need to go.” He tells Hux but all he does is sip at his drink.

  
  


“Where exactly do you intend to take me Ren?” His voice is sharp and hard like ice and the men beside him seem in awe at his bravery.

  
  


“To get Glenn.”

  
  


That straightens him up, Hux’s eyes finally meet his as he sets his glass down onto the ringed table, “You have a lead? Did you see him? Did someone tell you something?” He pulls his notebook out of his breast pocket and readies his pen against a fresh page.

  
  


“I… it was…” Normally he would have no problem telling anyone in this town that it had been a vision but the way Hux is looking at him, waiting a little desperate for those concrete facts he so loves makes him fall short.

  
  


“You have another vision Ky?” Phasma asks taking Thanisson’s beer and placing it in front of him. He takes a drink of it just to enjoy the startled gasp from the man next to him.

  
  


“Oh please, you don’t really believe that malarky too Phasma.”

  
  


“No, it’s true. Show him something Ky.” She urges.

  
  


He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, the things the force had shown him about Hux were far too personal to just spill in front of their colleagues, and the force liked to slip out of his control whenever Hux was close to make most simple parlor tricks out of the question.

  
  


“Yeah, go on Ky. Show me something.” Hux goded his mouth twitching, threatening to smirk at him.

  
  


“Give me your hand.” He demands, he had never been good at being the bigger man in any situation. Scoffing Hux lays his hand on the table for Kylo to take.

  
  


Hux’s skin is warm, way way too warm, but the skin on skin contact weaves some force web around him. _The bar falls away and attached to the hand he’s holding in both of his is younger Hux again, the blood stained boy with tears in his eyes._

  
  


“ _What can I tell you to make you believe me?” He asks the younger version, the boy’s perfect red hair is tousled and he wishes present day Hux would wear it like that because god it was perfect._

  
  


“ _Tell me what I did with the box.”_

  
  


“ _The box?”_

  
  


_With his other hand Hux drops a lunch box on the table, it’s an old hard plastic affair, dark blue with constellations painted on it, he opens it with one hand and spins it for Kylo to see. There are pictures in the lunch box, pictures of Hux and the dark haired boy (Sull), little metal trinkets, a calculator watch with a blood soaked cloth band._

  
  


_Young Hux leans over the table to whisper in his ear, breath hot and at the same time not there at all._

  
  


When he pulls back thirty something Hux is staring at him with narrow eyes, his hand clammy between Kylo’s.

  
  


“You buried a lunch box under the maple tree by the East wing,” He tells him, his voice a drone of noise coming from far away, “You touched every thing in the box just one more time before you buried it where he had first-”

  
  


“That’s enough!” Hux yells yanking his hand away from Kylo, “That’s enough. We’ll go.” Hux finishes voice shaking but mostly under control. He downs what’s left of his drink and taps at Phasma’s broad shoulder to let him out of the booth, “You’ll have to drive.” He tells him as they walk out of the bar leaving the more competent part of the sheriff’s department to gossip about Hux.

  
  


“I already told you know one but me drives the challenger.”

  
  


“Lets just go.” Hux hisses getting into the car, Kylo isn’t the least bit surprised to find he slams the door.

  
  


They drive in silence out of town towards the Kallies farm.

  
  


They are twenty minutes into the drive when he can’t take it anymore, he pulls over to the side of the road.

  
  


“Is this it? I don’t see anyone, “ _Kylo,_ “Ren.”

  
  


Now he knows isn’t the time to get into why Hux won’t call him by his name out loud when he can hear it rattle around in that storm of a mind of his. No, he needs to address the more pressing matter of why he’s so pissed. It wasn’t as if he had told the entire bar about the worrisome death scene he played over and over in his mind, or the interaction with Andersen and his father, nothing about whatever the hell the commandant’s cadets where.

  
  


Fuck Hux had told him to say that in a weird magical force kind of way.

  
  


“Why are you so pissed at me?”

  
  


“I’m not pissed.”

  
  


“You are. You really are. Why? I didn’t say anything too personal-”

  
  


That did it. Hux shifts from that too controlled, apathetic, stoic man to a man on fire as he whirls in his seat (still stained by beer), “Nothing too personal? Are you fucking kidding me Ren? Oh yes by all means please tell the whole town that I buried a lunch box of my dead boyfriend’s things under the tree where he had first told me he loved me. Oh yes, not personal at all.” He turns back away from Ren, glaring out into the dead of the night instead, “Fuck you and you’re parlor tricks Ren. I don’t know where you got that information but you and your source can go straight to hell.”

  
  


Ren sighs heavily, something he had never really done before he had met Hux, and starts the car back up.

  
  


It’s only a couple of silent minutes until he asks another question, “Why did you bury that box? You seemed to love all the items in it very much…”

  
  


“Because I couldn’t go to the funeral.” He tells him, voice tired and heavy like he had ripped these memories from his mind by force rather than have them given to him, “How much further?”

  
  


“Not long now.”

  
  


Two twists in the road later and the headlights wash over a young man with red hair.

  
  


“Holy shit.” Hux whispers and opens the car door before he even has a chance to stop the car.

  
  


Kylo sits in the car staring as Hux approaches Glenn. He can’t bring himself to get out of the car, when he looks at the boy all he feels is this terrible dull ache in his chest.

  
  


“No.” He can hear Glenn yell as Hux wraps the boy in his arms, “No! No! NO! You’re lying! The mayor told you to tell me-” Kylo watches as Hux and Glenn drop to the ground in the spotlight of the car, listens to the wails of the young man muffled by Hux’s chest, watches Hux’s fingers card gently though Glenn’s hair and whisper things he can’t hear from here, even with the window rolled down.

  
  


It’s altogether too private, watching that boy break and crumble. He turns off the car, taking the spotlight of his headlights away from the tragedy unfolding around him.

  
  


_Protect him._

  
  


_Protect him please, please god you have to_

  
  


He can hear a mess of voices whispering, praying, pleading around him and he’s not sure who it is, what ghost is pushing through the thin veil around Kylo to beg on behalf of a lover left behind.

  
  


He realises it doesn’t really matter which dead boyfriend it was, the answer was the same. He would. He’d protect them both from whatever was coming their way.

  
  


Hux manages to get Glenn into the back seat of the car and folds in after him to wrap his arms around him, “Let’s go Kylo.”

 


	9. Millicent

 

 

The house was tall, narrow, old and would be very nice if anyone other than Ren lived there no doubt. Mostly the house just looks dusty. Almost haunted in the gloom of the barely lit street.

  
  


It looks mostly unused inside, the dust on the floors in most of the rooms leads Hux to the conclusion that in the large house Kylo is only ever in three or four rooms.

  
  


The front parlour is decked out in old Persian rugs and deep red silk cloths over lamps. A single small table, two people, sits in the centre of the room with a deck of cards (real cards like a game of solitaire is about to break out) in the centre.

  
  


The room smells heavily of the yellowing pages of books and some heavy flowery scent he can’t name.

  
  


It's obviously were Kylo plays his psychic routine.

  
  


He gives the room a wide berth. He wants nothing to do with Ren's supposed gift. Gift for research maybe. He wouldn't mind so much if he didn't turn those skills on him like he had tonight. He seethed silently at the thought of such a horrible invasion.

  
  


He'd find out which of his old schoolmates had told and he would make them disappear.

  
  


Glenn was sitting in front of him on one of the lower stairs, he still looked completely wrecked. Too wrecked it seemed to show any concern for the fact that they had taken him to Kylo's home instead of back to his parents.

  
  


Hux had found several long notes hidden behind Glenn's headboard that had mentioned something about the mayor in terms just vague enough to be infuriating. Kylo seemed to have his own reasons for keeping the kid close but Hux didn't want to know about those right now.

  
  


For the past half hour every attempt to talk to Glenn about Francis and what had happened had ended with two or three real words before the boy dissolved into a gasping crying mess once again.

  
  


He had taken to examining Kylo's home instead.

  
  


The kitchen was a pile of take out boxes and bottles. The counter surfaces and stove held that same film of dust and grime on them screaming that they had never been used.

  
  


It made his stomach turn, that kind of neglect.

  
  


The living room proper is little more than a den, it however looks like Kylo spends all of his time in it. There is a movie paused on the large screen television, the couch hooks around the room, looking so broken in that it might try to eat him, blankets and pillows and half read books are all over the couch.

  
  


It's a disgusting mess but at least it looks well used.

  
  


There's a pounding noise and swearing as Kylo appears red faced in the living room door.

  
  


"What are you doing?" He asks and Hux is surprised to find he's actually been tidying up the room without thinking about it.

  
  


He drops the blanket he'd been folding.

  
  


"Nothing. This place is disgusting." He counters quickly. Hux notices there are very few photos in the house and in none of them is he younger than fifteen, maybe sixteen. Photos with Snoke and a tall blonde girl that must have been Phasma. Nothing in this house seemed to come from the age before Kylo had shown up with just that car and the blood splattered clothes on his back.

  
  


Kylo is giving him that strange unfocused look again before he shakes his head sharply and clears his throat, "We should take him to Snoke. Tell him you found-"

  
  


"No."

  
  


Hux had opened his mouth to say the same thing but that's not where the sound had come from.

  
  


Glenn is standing in the hall, his cheeks streaked with tear tracks, his eyes red and puffy but his back is straight, his fists clenched like he expects a fight about this.

  
  


"Why?" Kylo asks, "He can help if there is something going on with the mayor."

  
  


Hux's eyes flick over the photos on the walls, it was obvious that Snoke was a father to him, had taken him in according to everything he had read, raised him up as much was left when you took in a bloody, violent, mystery kid at fifteen.

  
  


It's been pretty fucking clear to Hux exactly why they couldn't do that. The sheriff would have been under the mayor's thumb, and if the mayor wanted Glenn to disappear he didn't want to know how Snoke would make it happen.

  
  


He walks across the space, out into the hall to stand between Glenn and the front door, worried he'll really runaway this time. He walks slow his hands up to keep Glenn calm.

  
  


"You aren't going anywhere Glenn. Not until we get everything sorted out. I promise."

  
  


Kylo raises an eyebrow, "You want him to stay with me?"

  
  


The fact that Kylo isn't great with people hasn't been lost on him but this is more important and he can't stay with Hux. His apartment is barely big enough for he and Millie.

  
  


"I don't want to stay with Ren." Glenn whispers stepping closer to Hux.

  
  


"He isn't going to hurt you Glenn. Right Ren?" He puts his hands on the shorter red heads shoulders and looks over his head at Kylo. He tries to give him a look that feeds into his ego, something flattering and vaguely damsel-esque.

  
  


A faint colouring brushes across the man's cheeks as he sighs and leans heavily against the wall.

  
  


"Of course I won't hurt him Bren."

  
  


"I thought I told you not to call me that." He tightens his grip on the boy without meaning to. He wouldn't have noticed at all if he hadn't flinched under him. Glenn steps away from them both into some no man's land by a disused dining room. There is at least a table in there. At least that's what he thinks is under all those pizza boxes.

  
  


"But it's such a lovely name." Kylo answers staring at him with eyes that are entirely too dark and pulling. The way Kylo Ren looks at him is like a puzzle he's almost finished solving and he doesn't care for it one bit. The embarrassment of the bar comes flooding back, heating up his cheeks something terrible. The anger is slipping back in now that the excitement of finally finding Glenn has worn off.

  
  


He needs out of here before he says something stupid.

  
  


"Stay with Ren, he's not as stupid as he looks I promise." He barely looks at Kylo as he turns to leave, his hand on the door, "I'll be back first thing in the morning Ren. Take care of the kid."

  
  


Hux gets halfway down the sidewalk before the door opens behind him and someone comes rushing out.

  
  


He expects it to be Ren, straightens his back, schools his face in preparation for whatever invasive malarkey he has in store this time.

  
  


It's Glenn who stops in front of him looking up at him with wide scared eyes.

  
  


"Don't leave me with Ren. He's a monster." He whispers and Hux pushes the boys red hair out of his eyes, a little jealous at how dark and almost alburn the tresses were  in this light compared to the ginger wildfire of his own.

  
  


"No treasure is safer than with a dragon." He tells him softly worried that Kylo will over hear the strange praise, "I have to feed my cat and look into some things. The sooner I can do this the sooner you'll be-"

  
  


"Safe." Glenn looks down at the pavement between them. Hux was going to say with his parents, back home. But that was obviously not what the boy cared about, "I'd feel a lot better if you left me a weapon."

  
  


Hux pulled his notebook out of his front pocket and held it out for the boy to take. The more time he spent with Glenn, the more he knew Kylo was right. This boy was nothing like him. He was crumbling under the weight of his lover’s murder. Had Sul been murdered, by someone other than his own horrifying manipulated ambition he wouldn't have rested until the murder was six feet under.

  
  


"What's this?" Glenn asks taking the notebook and flipping through it. The pages caught on his fingers to splay open to a sketch of Kylo lounged lazily over a steering wheel.

  
  


"It's my most effective weapon."

  
  


"Is this where you tell me that knowledge is the most important weapon?" Glenn looks at him stuffing the notepad into his back pocket but looks at him with a level of disdain he wouldn't have thought possible an hour ago.

  
  


There may be hope for Glenn Curtis after all.

  
  


"The only way to ensure that the bad guys get what they deserve is to take notes, to write down facts and observations that you can give to the people building a case against them."

  
  


Glenn's eyes slid over the empty gun holster at Hux's belt.

  
  


"I'm a deputy of the law Glenn, not a hired gun, I'm not a vigilante."

  
  


"He's an officer not an architect." A deep voice falls across him and he turns slightly to see Kylo leaning in the open doorway, the light of the hallway spilling orange across the lawn, keeping the man in shadows.

  
  


"What does that even mean?" Hux let's out a frustrated sigh.

  
  


"It's a movie..." Glenn tells him before Kylo can open his smart mouth in reply, "Frankie loved those old revenge flicks." He tells the sidewalk sadly.

  
  


"Go back inside Glenn, get some sleep."

  
  


"I don't think I'll ever sleep again."

  
  


"I have lots of movies to occupy us until Deputy Gingersnap gets back."

  
  


Hux doesn't say anything about the name because it's gotten Glenn moving towards the house finally. That and it feels a lot better than Kylo calling him Bren like a lover.

  
  


He looks at Kylo once more before he turns his back on the house. He wishes he hadn't, the moonlight had caught the dark brown of his eyes, had light up his strong features and lazily curling dark hair in a way that made him seem ethereal.

  
  


Perhaps that wasn't too far off, the entire town seemed to think that Kylo Ren was something not quite human.

  
  


Kylo waves a lazy hand at Hux before he closes the door. He waits until he heard the click of a lock and the slide of a deadbolt before he starts back across town to his tiny apartment and his no doubt very unhappy cat.

  
  


-

  
  


Millie doesn't even bother to hiss at him when he comes in. He can't say that he's surprised that she's ignoring him. She was a creature of habit as much as he was and ever since they had gotten to this town everything has been a mess.

  
  


He wants to blame Ren but he can't. Not for this. He could maybe blame Glenn or Francis or even Phasma for dragging him out to the bar tonight to properly welcome him to the department.

  
  


He could but he knows it’s not the truth.

  
  


There is no one to blame here but himself.

  
  


The wet cat food makes a miserable thunk noise as it hits the bowl in the eerie silence of the apartment. It's not a wet cat food day but he feels the need to apologise.

  
  


He stands at the bowl for a few long minutes waiting for her to slink into the kitchenette and forgive him.

  
  


Millie doesn't bother to accept his offering. He's not sure he's ever seen her this upset before. With a heavy sigh he moves to the living room/bedroom (God he really couldn't wait until something more suited to his tastes came on the market, he had barely lived in this shoebox and it was already far too long), he had a spare notepad in one of the boxes by the wardrobe he was sure.

  
  


He hadn't been lying to Glenn when he had said it was his most effective weapon. He felt naked without it and if the rest of the night went the way he hoped it would have a lot to make note of. He hadn’t needed to use a gun in years, possibly a full decade now. That was thing about keeping track of the facts, most of the time you didn’t need to resort to violence.

  
  


Hux is digging in the dark through a box of books when the flutter of the curtain catches his attention.

  
  


"I didn't..." A cold chill runs through his body and he gets up slowly, in what would be a fluid motion if the scars at his side didn't still tug at him.

  
  


He moves slowly to the wall separating the kitchen and bathroom from the rest of the apartment and flicks the light switch on.

  
  


He wants to swear but he can't think of a combination of vile words that will properly convey how upset he is.

  
  


On the wall, carved into the weak drywall and plaster are sharp dark lines.

  
  


_Leave the case alone or the cat DIES_

  
  


"Millie?" His voice shakes a little bit as the cold rage settles in him like steal, "Millicent!" He yells voice hard he pushes away from the wall and proceeds to rip his small apartment apart.

  
  


He doesn't stop until he's standing in the middle of a hurricane of clothes and books, his bed ripped apart, the mattress leaning against the wall, all the cabinets open, vents ripped open.

  
  


She isn't here.

  
  


They took his fucking cat.

  
  


If they thought this would keep him away from the Fallen case they didn't know him as well as they obviously thought they did.

  
  


He picks up a notepad from the rubble of his apartment and stuffs it into his breast pocket and leaves the apartment.

  
  


Standing in the cold early summer morning he falters briefly not sure where he should go.

  
  


Something strange in his gut tells him the dinner. Although that could really just be his stomach rather than some great intuition or higher power as Kylo would gladly call it.

  
  


The dinner is closed. Of course.

  
  


He sits on the narrow uneven steps and waits thinking about everything he knows or thinks he knows about the Fallen case.

  
  


He had practically nothing.

  
  


Just horrible familiar feelings and a reminder of his father in everything he heard about Mayor Fallen. He hadn't even met the man yet. Everything he had read about Kylo had suggested something corrupt going on in this town and the reporter (junior turned senior reporter as the articles got more recent) had stray articles about strange goings on involving the mayor.

  
  


But Poe was in the hospital, sent there by Kylo acting as Snoke’s iron fist.

  
  


He had spent his last few Kyloless days focusing on Glenn and all the stray clues he had left behind.

  
  


Things in letters and emails to 'Frankie' as he called him about a life they would have far away from his father. Something about money from some source Francis had set up.

  
  


"What are you doing here?"

  
  


Hux looks up to find Finn standing in front of him an apron in one hand and a set of keys in the other.

  
  


"Finn..." Something hits Hux and he's a little embarrassed it's taken him so long to get here, "How's Poe?"

  
  


"Did your boyfriend tell you to say that?" Finn asks.

  
  


“My boyfriend?” It actually takes a moment for Hux’s brain to process that Finn thinks that he and Kylo are together, he’s glad for the veil of early morning gloom that hid the stain of his cheeks from the younger man, “Kylo and I aren’t together.” He tells him standing up to get some height on the man.

  
  


Everything he had heard about him from Phasma didn’t quite fit him anymore. Phasma had talked about him like a child attached to her apron strings, shy and scared, a sweet boy but a coward. The man in front of him looked at him with hardened eyes and a set jaw. There was softness about him he could see it in the round shoulders and the grease and grass stains on his pants and the fact that it was three in the morning and he was coming into work before anyone else. There was something that told Hux it wasn’t because he was told to but because he offered.

  
  


“Please move, I need to get to work, I have to start the waffles.”

  
  


“I have questions about Poe.”

  
  


“Then why are you here? He’s at the hospital where your _friend_ put him.” The way he said that was maybe even worse then just flat out calling Kylo his boyfriend.

  
  


“Visiting hours aren’t for hours. I need answers now.”

  
  


In all honesty he needed answers three or four days ago but he hadn’t known the questions yet.

  
  


“I can’t help you deputy.” Finn shoulders past him and Hux puts a cold hand on the man’s wrist as he tries to unlock the door.

  
  


“You are the only person who can Finn. Forget about Kylo and what he did, forget about how the department let you down. This isn’t about Kylo, this isn’t about the department, this isn’t even about you or me. It’s about a dead kid and a kid who might be next.”

  
  


“Franny?” Finn whispers like he thinks he’ll be overheard and hell maybe he will be. The more he learns about this town like Snoke had wanted the more it feels like a shitty dystopia.

  
  


“You have time to talk now.”

  
  


“Come inside. I really do need to start the waffles.”

  
  


He follows Finn into the dark diner running on rage tempered into steal and not much else until Finn starts a pot of coffee and quickly fills a mug and sets it in front of him.

  
  


Hux leans against a deep metal sink with the hot mug in his hands and watches as Finn moves around the kitchen mixing up a pale batter.

  
  


“What is it you need?”

  
  


“Poe was working with a source, the article Kylo had…”

  
  


“Poe always had great sources, he’s an amazing reporter.” Finn gushes a little throwing spices into the batter.

  
  


“Yes, I’ve read a few of his articles,” Every article he could find about Ren had been written apparently by the reporter with no fear, “He’s very good. I, however, need to know if you know who this source of his was, for the article about the mayor?”

  
  


He had a pretty good idea who the source was he just need confirmation, facts, from the all the correspondence of Glenn’s that he’s sifted through he can safely say that Franny, Frankie, Francis whatever you wanted to call him, was the brains of the operation and had kept the redhead in the dark as much as possible.

  
  


Plausible deniability? Most likely to keep Glenn safe from the exact mess he was in now.

  
  


“I…” Finn falters, “Poe is really protective of his sources…”

  
  


Finn doesn’t trust him.

  
  


Not enough at least, enough to let him in and give him free coffee and talk about Poe, not enough to give him the source Poe had been hospitalized to protect. Normally being a cop worked in his favour in this kind of situation, that would never be the case in this town he knew and especially not with Finn who had been so disillusioned by the force that he had taken what had to be a massive pay cut to work in a greasy spoon.

  
  


“Was it Francis?”

  
  


“What?”

  
  


“Was Poe’s source Francis Fallen?” He tries again slower, “For the corruption piece on Mayor Fallen. Was the source Francis?” Hux sets the coffee down firmly on the table.

  
  


“I don’t know.”

  
  


“Finn…”

  
  


“I said I don’t know. He never told me. He wouldn’t tell me. Said the story was too big. That it would rock the foundations of the city. Bring _them_ to their knees. He didn’t want me involved.”

  
  


Hux promised himself that if he was ever in this deep with anything he was telling Kylo everything. He was so tired of this protecting each other, left in the dark, bullshit. It made justice fucking impossible.

  
  


Not that he thought that he would ever want to protect Kylo Ren from anything.

  
  


_Kylo was not his boyfriend._ He tells himself silently and firmly. He knew that, everyone knew that, so why did it feel like it maybe wasn’t as true as it was. The days without Kylo had been peaceful and protective.

  
  


He hadn’t missed Kylo’s swooning for a single minute.

  
  


Hux raked a hand through his hair, the gel was flaking away unattractively and his hair was flopping all over the place when he moved. He hated it but he didn’t exactly have time to go back to his apartment and try to find where he had thrown his hair products.

  
  


“I’m sorry Hux, I honestly don’t know.”

  
  


“It’s okay Finn.”

  
  


“No. It’s not. Once visiting hours are open I’ll go and see Poe.”

  
  


“Call me when you get any information.” Hux writes his cell number on an old receipt and downs the coffee.

  
  


“I will… I just wish I could do more now.” Finn looks down at the bowl in his hands and his eyes light up, “Hang around a few more minutes.”

  
  


“What?”

  
  


“Waffles. They are the best in the county I swear they are worth it.”

  
  


He really doesn’t have time for this. Not that he knows exactly what he could be doing instead at quarter to four in the morning.

  
  


“Alright.”

  
  


“They don’t take that long and they are well worth the wait. That’s what I told Franny the other day too.”

  
  


Hux looks up at the man whose busying himself with folding the batter into an ancient looking iron, “Franny?”

  
  


“Yeah,” Finn continues sadly, “It was a couple days before the murder I think. He wanted to talk to Poe but he was in the hospital.”

  
  


“He wanted to talk to Poe?”

  
  


“Yeah. Lots of people did. It was probably about Glenn. The entire town was pretty surprised when Glenn disappeared.”

  
  


“That so?” Hux urged, Finn was a much better source of information when he didn’t realize that’s what he was doing.

  
  


“Yeah we were all so sure that they would disappear together. I really wish they had. Maybe Franny would still be alive now. Just a few minutes more. Grab me one of those containers would you?” He points at the styrofoam containers on top of a shelf that there was no way the shorter man could reach without a step stool. Finn was rattling off directions for the waffles.

  
  


“Why are you telling me this?”

  
  


“The waffles?”

  
  


“Yeah isn’t it some sort of secret.”

  
  


“Well yes but…”

  
  


“You just want me to keep Kylo out of here don’t you.”

  
  


Finn’s smile is shy but sweet as he hands Hux the container full of waffles, “I’ll call you when I get information from Poe.”

 


	10. Hot waffles & Ice cold Ren +ART

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has ART!!!
> 
> The delightful @m-oarts made a wonderful piece for this chapter check it out below and make sure to go look at all the rest of their wonderful art on their tumblr!

 

 

He doesn't remember falling asleep.

 

It must have been sometime after Glenn had finally closed his eyes and before the climax of Suspira.

 

He remembers obscenely bright colours and atmospheric music and low voices but doesn't remember fighting any witches.

 

Damn. He loves that part.

 

Glenn is folded in on himself on the couch beside him, a wall of blankets between them like they would protect him from the world.

 

He leans over putting the back of his hand in front of the boy’s mouth to check for breathing. He wants to pinch himself to make sure that this is really happening this time.

 

The light in the room was too uneven, too real and the puff of breath on the back of his hand made him sure that this time it was real.

 

If he looked in a mirror his own face would be looking back at him this time not the face of a murdered teenager.

 

He could tell now that the red of the boys hair wasn't right. It was too dark for Hux, _Bren_. He had no desire to run his fingers through this hair, to touch this pale freckled skin.

 

He grabs his phone off the cluttered coffee table and checks it.

 

Kylo isn't sure why exactly he woke up until he hears a soft noise in the kitchen. A hiss of noise and he freezes.

 

Surely no one would have broken into his house, _his house_. Kylo Ren was untouchable in this town, if the mayor wanted Glenn like both red heads seemed to believe then this was the only safe place for him. No one would go against Snoke and Kylo like this.

 

He slowly rose from the couch, careful to leave Glenn asleep on the couch. He tossed a blanket carefully over the boy’s head, the living room was a mess of blankets and pillows he would just look like more of Kylo's mess.

 

The sound of the door opening and closing and more soft hissing pulls Kylo through the house to the kitchen.

 

He freezes in the door stunned.

 

Hux is grumbling quietly to himself in an immaculate kitchen, the kitchen table set for three people, a pitcher of orange juice on the clean table (the table was apparently not grey but black stained wood), the counters and stove have all been scrubbed clean and the smell of the element is familiar but foreign in this house.

 

He's a hundred percent sure the only time he have ever used the stove was that one winter when he had needed to warm up some socks.

 

Hux doesn't seem to notice him at all until he turns to the centre island to grab a styrofoam container.

 

The redhead seems to freeze under Kylo's confused gaze.

 

It's so... Domestic.

 

It's unsettling.

 

Kylo had been thinking a lot about Hux since they met, had dreams about him, fantasies really, but none of them got anywhere this close to domesticity.

 

"What are you doing?"

 

"You're kitchen was a fucking mess."

 

It's not really an answer but it breaks whatever spell had been cast on them because Hux picks up the container and turns his attention back to the stove and Kylo walks slowly through the shockingly pristine kitchen to watch whatever it is that Hux is going to do.

 

"Where have you been?" Kylo asks noticing the redness of the man's eyes, the determined clench of his jaw.

 

"Doing my job." Is the harsh reply he gets. Something is off, definitely off but Kylo doesn't push when he sees what Hux is pulling out of the container to fry on a stove that's never been used.

 

"Are those waffles from-"

 

"The diner yes."

 

"You brought me waffles... And cleaned my kitchen..."

 

"I had to clean the kitchen to heat up the waffles." Is all Hux says about the matter. His mind if possible is a worse mess than before. He's standing in front of the stove his sleeves rolled up and he is thinking about the case, the case that Kylo is supposed to be distracting him from.

 

He's doing such a good job.

 

"Do you want some coffee?" Hux asks pointing to the far counter where a coffee pot sits quietly dripping.

 

"I don't have a coffee pot..."

 

"You did. I found it under all the filth you called a kitchen."

 

"I certainly didn't have coffee." He pulls the pot out from under the drip, carefully putting a spare mug under the slow machine as he fills up his cup.

 

"Freezer. Behind some questionable meat."

 

He leans against the counter and sips his coffee trying to figure out what exactly is going on here. The Hux that he's gotten to know would have kicked the couch and dropped the box of waffles into his lap, called him all kinds of terrible things in his mind. This was new and different and he couldn’t think of what could have changed. If it was gratitude for finding Glenn he was late with it, he would have prefered not being left alone with the kid all night over waffles.

 

But they were very very good waffles.

 

_Millie_

 

_Millie_

 

_Millie_

 

The thoughts slam into his head and he just barely manages to catch the coffee in his mug as it tried to slosh all down his front.

 

Millie? Wasn’t that his cat’s name? What had happened that left such a hollow angry feeling in the man, what had swept his mind into an even bigger mess than before?

 

“What happened to Millie?” Kylo asks as Hux starts shaking the hot waffles out of the skillet.

 

Hux looks up at him quickly painfully intense red rimmed eyes boring into him, “What did you just say?”

 

“What happened to your stupid cat Hux?” In the blink of an eye Kylo is bent backwards over the counter Hux’s body pressed up close, his arm across his neck, pressing just hard enough to let him know that he could actually do damage to him.

 

Red hair falls into his face, it’s so fucking soft as it whispers across his cheek when Hux leans forward to speak. His lips brush across the shell of his ear, soft, burning, just wet enough to send shocks of feeling down his body, heat pooling in him.

 

“If I find out you had anything to do with Millie I will rip you apart Kylo Ren. Do you understand me?” He punctuated the sentence with by pressing his arm harder into his throat.

 

Kylo chokes, “You aren’t the violent type Bren. You couldn’t rip me apart.”

 

Hux leans back so that Kylo can see his eyes, “Look in my eyes Kylo. If you’re a psychic you should know the answer to that.” The entire kitchen seems to drop away, just Hux pressed too close to him with those killer eyes of his. Killer being the word. There was something far too cold and hard in those eyes that whispered of pooled blood and snapping bone, explosions and precision strikes. The man’s entire spirit, his presence in the force was bathed in blood.

 

If there was anyone in this town that believed that the cold standoffish but square and straightlaced deputy Hux was capable of the kind of violence he was threatening it was the man he had pinned to the counter.

 

An image flashes in his brain but it isn’t the images of violence that Hux wants to share with him it’s the wall above the man’s bed, dark sharp lines carved into the plaster.

 

“They took you’re fucking cat?” He hisses out, “Who even does that?”

 

“That is what I plan on finding out Ren.”

 

“ _We_.”

 

“What?”

 

“We’re partners I’m going to help you get that poorly named cat back.”

 

"We are not partners Ren." Hux hisses above him but the heat of his body and the color high on his cheeks says something else.

 

Ren reaches up and buries a hand in the front of the tan deputy uniform, the other raising to skim fingers along the man's hairline, brushing magically soft hair away from his face before settling at the back of the man's neck.

 

Hux moves easily forward with a simple gentle pressure on his neck. Hux's mind is a hurricane around him, beating at him, battering with thoughts both violent and tender. Kylo has every intention in that moment to succumb to the storm.

 

He can feel Hux's hot breath on his lips, watches the flutter of golden lashes against his tender reddened skin.

 

"Oh shit I'm sorry!" A yelp from the doorway pulls Hux away sharply, the man takes a painful step away and stands practically at parade rest leaving Ren to freeze with the sudden absence of his body, aching in more ways than are clearly visible.

 

Hux's pale eyes sweep across Ren before he turns back to the plate of waffles.

 

"I didn't mean to interrupt..." Glenn continues red faced and staring at the floor which it seemed Hux had also cleaned. How long had he been here, how long had it been since Hux had slept?

 

"I can ensure you Glenn that the only thing you interrupted was Ren's overactive imagination." Hux tells him in a stern flat tone as he puts the waffles on the table, without even turning Hux continues, "Why don't you take a shower Ren. I'll make sure Glenn leaves you some waffles."

 

Hux doesn't say _Cold shower_ but is certainly what he meant. He wants to forego the shower just to prove something but what that is and who he wants to prove it to he’s not sure.

 

The older red head at the table sends him a hard look over his shoulder and is sends a flush of heat through his body. With hissing and grumbled curses he stalks through the kitchen to the stairs.

 

"If there are no waffles left when I get back I'm going to shoot you with your own gun!"

 

_Good luck with that._

 

Hux thought loudly, the roll of his eyes could be felt from his location on the stairs.

 

Kylo digs in a little deeper into Hux's mind as he stripped in the bathroom. Anything to keep his mind focused on something that wasn't the heat of his closeness or the shimmering gloss of wet on his lips.

 

He turned the water on cold, as icy as he could stand and stood at the edge of the frigid spray and swam in Hux's mind, the stressed, sleepless, angry, scared, mess of his mind was easy to infiltrate. There was no reason for the man in his kitchen to have learned to keep him out. Hux was a maelstrom of thoughts, images of his cat, the murder of Francis Fallen, flickers of long lists of things he needed to do, people to talk to, things he needed to find out, it was a mess and he tried to move through the images to something true and calm at the core of the man. Something that had nothing to do with the dark haired boy who whispered in the force or the oppression of his father, or his obsession with duty.

 

Something small and calm and just Hux.

 

_The image is fuzzy as it wraps around Kylo's mind blocking out the icy water burning against his skin._

 

_Hux is sitting alone in a field, he has headphones in, the soft lilt of something classical weaves through the memory as the wind drifts lazily through the tall grass._

 

_He's looking out at a house, a large old brick thing with large windows and several chimneys and Kylo knows without asking or being told that this is Hux's home._

 

_Kylo leans over Hux's young shoulder to look at the book in his hand._

 

_He expects it to be some classical novel, something far more advanced than Kylo could read now let alone fifteen._

 

_It isn't a book._

 

_Not in that way anyway._

 

_Little Hux is sitting alone in a field on a pretty summer day sketching the house and God is it beautiful._

 

_Little Hux looks up away from the sketchbook, with his graphite smudged fingers and looks right at him._

 

_"Ren?" The voice doesn't fit quite right, it sounds too deep for the small waif of a boy, "Ren if you don't hurry up I'm going to give Glenn your waffles."_

 

Kylo blinks hard and the burning of the ice cold water of his skin has died into an uncomfortable numbness, he's sitting in the tub and he looks over at the door.

 

"Ren? Are you okay?" There is the barest hint of concern in his voice as the bathroom door creaks open, "I'm coming in so if this is some ploy to get me to see you naked I can assure you you won't like my response." Hux's voice hardens and Kylo tries to sit up in the tub but the frigid water has numbed him more than he thought and he slips just enough to make a horrible noise.

 

"I'm fine-" the words chatter out past his shivering teeth and the door opens all the way. Kylo makes a note to start locking doors if Hux is going to stick around.

 

"Jesus Kylo." Hux hisses low as he steps fully into the bathroom. Kylo watches mesmerised as Hux unbuttons his cuff and rolls up one sleeve, he shoves his arm into the shower and shuts of the water, "I didn't mean for you to give yourself fucking pneumonia"

 

Kylo watches as the red headed man, the artist hidden under the posture of a military man searches the bathroom for better towels then the meager thin thing hanging on the wall.

 

Hux pulls him out of the tub and sits him down on the toilet wrapping him in all the towels he found under the sink.

 

"You're lips are blue, Christ. You are weak enough as it is."

 

"I'm not weak."

 

"Sure.  We can pretend you haven't swooned nearly every time I've seen you like your some southern belle trying to get my attention." Hux tells him in a soft tone as he leans in to rub the water off his shaking shoulders.

 

Hux is kneeling in front of him, close, his eyes focused beyond Kylo's face. Kylo is naked and shivering and this was absolutely not the way he wanted to introduce Bren to some of his more intimate anatomy, but here he is so close that the heat and scent of him (waffles and coffee) are all he can focus on.

 

"How are you going to help me like this Ren?" He whispers seeming to not need an answer, "If you want to be partners so badly I could really use that demon that people seem to see when they look at you." The towel slips from Hux's grip and he rubs his thumb across Kylo's clavicle.

 

It pulls a gasp out of him that he would be ashamed of under normal circumstances.

 

The sensation tries to pull him under, back in time, across the country to the icy winter that withered Hux's soul.

 

He clenches his teeth and focuses on the golden lashes of the man in front of him, tries to hone in on the embarrassment of the situation, of having this man take care of him like this. Tries to anchor himself in the present.

 

"Have you seen a doctor about these spells Kylo?" Hux asks draping the soft towel around his shoulders and standing up. The way he looks down at him should make his cheeks burn. There are flashes of begrudging approval in Kylo's body that are tainted by concern.

 

"I don't need a doctor Bren." He watches as Hux's mouth twists in distaste at the nickname but he doesn't call him out on the name this time, "it's the force."

 

"It's probably epilepsy."

 

"It's the gift." A third voice weighs in and he turns to the open door to see Glenn, standing in the doorway, he's wringing his hands like he doesn't know what to do with himself.

 

Kylo grabs the towel from around his shoulders and drops it into his lap to hide himself from the boy. The ghost of feelings from the vision are unnerving to say the least. A warmth in his chest at the way the sunlight brightens the boy’s hair and the memory of the taste of his mouth make him feel slimy.

 

"Not you too Glenn."

 

"It's true!" The younger red head presses stepping into the bathroom with them, Kylo is positive that the room isn't big enough for this, "Kylo Ren has accurately predicted so many things! He knew about the flood seven years ago."

 

"So would a meteorologist or anyone else paying enough attention to their surroundings."

 

"He knew about the outcome of the election."

 

"Yeah I have some theories about that." Hux muttered darkly looking down his nose at him.

 

"He can read minds, I've seen it! I've seen him move things with his mind!"

 

Hux shakes his head sadly and puts a hand on Glenn's shoulder, "I've seen a lot of con men in my life but Ren is hands down the best."

 

He wonders if he should be flattered. He kind of is. Praise from Hux as Mitaka was sure to agree with was something hard earned.

 

"Did you have a vision Mr. Ren? Was it about Frankie?" Glenn is that kind of desperate that pulls that ache from his chest he doesn't want to feel. He wasn't used to caring about anyone and the idea that he might give a shit about Glenn was a strange idea.

 

"No Glenn, no it was a redhead."

 

Kylo watches as they both stiffen at that.

 

"A teenage boy sitting in a field drawing a grand house. All alone."

 

"Glenn wait downstairs please, I need to speak with Madam Cleo alone."

 

He gently pushes the teen out of the bathroom and they watch in silence as he disappears down the stairs.

 

"Get dressed." The curl of Hux's lip shouldn't be so appealing.

 

Wrapping the towel lazily around his hips, purposefully low he leaves the bathroom, padding silently down the hall towards his bedroom with Hux close behind him.

 

"You live here alone?"

 

When he looks over his shoulder Hux is looking in a bedroom that hasn't been used since Phasma found her own apartment. She couldn't take Kylo's mood swings anymore, or so she said he was pretty sure it was because that pretty little accountant in the mayor's office was afraid to spend the night.

 

"Yeah."

 

_You don't deserve a house this nice_

 

"How did you end up with this big a house?" Is what he says instead.

 

"I paid for it? How do people usually end up with houses?"

 

"You paid for this? How did you get the money for this place Ren?" Hux narrows his eyes and he can feel the worry roll off of Hux without even trying, he's worried he's dirty.

 

He is.

 

He just hadn't really thought about why Snoke asked him to do anything before.

 

Did ignorance make him a dirty cop or just the brainless muscle?

 

"I had some money to my name."

 

"Fifteen, bloody, in a stolen car with a trunk full of money?" Hux isn't quite asking.

 

"Where did you hear that?" There is an unintentional edge to his voice, it was a little too close to the truth for his liking.

 

"You're not the only one who can do research." He doesn't have to be in Hux's head to know he's thinking of his cat, probably pouring over some article on the internet that large orange cat trying to nap on the keyboard, Hux's face darkens and it's all he needs to judge.

 

"Even after all I've told you, you still don't believe in my power? You are certainly a stubborn man Hux."

 

"I'm not some small town bumpkin you can flim flam with slight of hand and a good head for facts Ren."

 

"Flim flam? Who says that nowadays?" Ren scoffed and turned into his bedroom to get dressed.

 

"You are just upset that i'm the only one in town not buying your personal brand of snake oil."

 

"Seriously Hux? Snake oil? Where did you park your time machine? We could put it to good use saving your cat."

 

"Or maybe stopping a kids murder, but, you know, only if we have time."

 

Kylo knew he had been in Hux's head too much when he was entirely sure which murder he was talking about.

 

"Just get dressed Ren, we can discuss your ' _abilities_ ' at length after we fix this mess."

 

Half way into a pair of jeans he looks up at Hux who is leaning in the doorway of his bedroom posture slack mind going a mile a minute.

 

"So you admit that we're partners then?"

 

"Never." Hux pushes away from the door and leaves, "Hurry up we have things to do. I want to go meet the mayor today."

 

Kylo stumbles, his legs trapped in narrow denim, staring at the empty doorway.

 

This is bad.

 

He knew this was bad.

 

This was exactly what Snoke had told him to stop Hux from doing. He needed to talk to Snoke. Maybe he would know what to do because Kylo wanted to get Hux's stupid cat back for him and the force wanted him to keep Glenn safe.

 

The last time he listened to what the force told him to do like this though he had ended up with a new name. He could never go back, not after what he had done and he had made a life here.

 

He couldn't throw away Arkanis like that.

 

He needed Snoke’s guidance. He felt torn in the strangest way. The force wanted something from him, wanted Hux, wanted him, wanted them but he didn't know what for.

 

The force hadn’t given him any visions of the Future since Hux had strolled into town and Goddamn he could really use one right now.

 

 


	11. Mayor Fallen

 

 

Hux stared at the last waffle for a few more minutes before he searched the kitchen for a baggie.

  


It took way too long, the kitchen was still an unorganised mess even after he had cleaned it.

  


It wasn't uncommon for Hux to stress clean.

  


He’d been doing it for years, scrubbing as he tried to organize his thoughts, tried to come up with a plan.

  


He didn’t have a plan. He’d cleaned the entire kitchen while Kylo and Glenn had been asleep on the couch for an entire movie, he made a note to talk to Kylo about the back door, it had been ungodly easy to open. With the kitchen in order, dishes in the dishwasher washing away at a low hum and the waffle in a ziplock in the freezer he still didn’t have a plan.

  


He was normally much better than this.

  


He was a Hux.

  


No one could escape a Hux, they were the mounties of a family, they always got their man.

  


So why was this so different.

  


He leaned his head against the freezer door and tried to take deep breaths, he knew, he knew why this was so different from anything else, it was different than any insurgency, any splinter cell, or murder he had dealt with in the past.

  


_Sul_

  


Hux closed his eyes tight against the early morning light filtering through the soft curtains over the sink, his breath shuddered, every time he looked at the photos, every time he closed his eyes he saw Sul, broken and bloody on the pale stone floor.

  


This was the case that broke him.

  


He had already been so broken by the mail bomb, by Sul’s death and the strange notoriety it had given him. He had gained so much by killing Sul, and lost his fucking soul.

  


He needed a plan.

  


Any plan.

  


“Do you have a plan?” The voice was small, soft and weak, Glenn. That voice was too gentle to belong to Kylo who was all rough mysterious edges behind smoke and mirrors.

  


Hux stood up quickly, his posture stiffening, shoulders squaring, jaw set in a determined line. He turned to look at the red head, sometimes it was like looking into a fun house mirror.

  


“Of course I have a plan.” He told him calmly, with just enough of an indignant huff to make it sound confident.

  


Glenn looked him in the eyes, held the gaze for longer than most people could and asked while looking down at the notebook he was twisting in his hands, “Is it a good plan?”

  


_Good enough for now._

  


“It’s good enough.” Kylo’s dark voice answered for him.

  


If Hux didn’t know better, and he most certainly did, he’d think Ren a mind reader.

  


“What are you going to do?” Glenn asks, moving away from Ren further into the kitchen, closer to Hux.

  


“We are going to see-”

  


“He doesn’t need to know. You are staying here.” Hux tells them both, looking from one to the other. Ren is leaning against the wall lazily, his lips still pale with the cold, his thick dark hair curled more than usual from the poor drying. Hux moves to Glenn, grabs his chin and moves his face from side to side, “I want you to get some more sleep.” The boy had bags under his eyes that darkened the freckled skin, looked bruised and tender, “Take one of the spare rooms upstairs.”

  


“I want to go with you. I can help.”

  


Hux took the younger man’s hands in his own and raised them to his chest, pressing the hands and notebook into the boy's chest, “You remember what I said about this?”

  


“The notebook?”

  


“Yes.”

  


Glenn looks down annoyed, frustrated but so so tired, drained from the knowledge of one less soul in the world, “I remember.”

  


“Go. This is what you can do to help. Stay here, stay safe, I’m going to leave some numbers on the fridge if you need to call okay?”

  


“I’m not the babysitter, I’m an adult.” Glenn grumbles pulling away from Hux.

  


Hux couldn’t help but think that Glenn was only made an adult by the recent trauma of Francis’ murder. Being an adult had nothing to do with age like so many people seemed to think. No Glenn had just put his other foot into adulthood and honestly Hux was a little sorry for him.

  


“Either way.” Hux turns away from him and prints out the numbers from his cell, Mitaka’s, Phasma’s and the stations and sticks it to the fridge with a shark magnet.

  


“You would trust Mitaka with this over me?” Kylo sounds hurt.

  


It’s ridiculous, obviously they would be together, why give two numbers for people who would more likely than not be standing in the same room. He couldn’t imagine a situation where Hux was in trouble that Kylo wasn’t beside him also in trouble.

  


“What makes you think Mitaka wouldn’t give ginger junior over to the bad guys?” He asks as they walk out the front door leaving ‘ginger junior’ behind in the relative safety of Kylo’s house.

  


“Because if there is one thing I know about Dopheld it’s that he wants to please me.”

  


Kylo’s face twists unhappily at that but he takes very little notice as he looks at the house. In the middle of the night and the early morning hours Kylo’s house had been the kind of house every small town had, the kind kids dared each other to go to, it looked classic victorian haunted. Tall, narrow, with embellishes on the veranda.

  


Now in the light of the morning proper if just looks like a house.

  


It’s a little disappointing really, Ren was all histrionics, he seemed the type for grand gestures, and poetry, he felt like a useless dark byronic hero. Dark and brooding and strong, and yet…

  


The Kylo in Hux’s mind easily shifts from the strong dark figure into the wet, shivering blue lipped and barely present mess he was.

  


Perhaps the house was perfect for him after all. A normal, calm, strong facade hiding the mess within.

  


“If you don’t want to go I can think of plenty of things we can do here. I haven’t properly introduced you to my bedroom.”

  


Hux turns slowly away from the house to look at Kylo. He’s leaning on the car, head pillowed in his arms looking at Hux with a smug look on his face. He even has the audacity to raise his eyebrows suggestively at him.

  


It’s the first time Kylo has so blatantly hit on him, in a way that couldn't be argued away as just trying to get a rise out of him, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

  


“I’ll even let you use the handcuffs.” Kylo smiles and Hux can feel his face burn even though the sun is barely up.

  


Hux tries to pull at memories of that unflappable person he knows he normally is for strength. Hux had never let someone get to him like this before. Not since his early days at the academy had he been on this end of the manipulation. Because surely that was what that had to be, Kylo Ren trying to use his appealing body to distract Hux from more important tasks.

  


Like getting his fucking cat back.

  


Hux gets into the car making sure to slam the door just a little harder than he should. He can hear Kylo grumble about it as he gets into the car.

  


-

  


Town Hall sits on a green hill overlooking the city center, it's an old brick building that reminds Hux of a train station, it’s a tall building, old with gabled roofs and a clock tower that doesn’t seem to keep time.

  


The flag out front in the midst of a bed of blood red flowers, is at half mast. A surprising sign of the town's grief over a boy most people didn’t even seem to like.

  


No one was ever called Franny like Francis Fallen was, because they were the kind of person you wanted to be friends with. He supposed in a small town like this any death that wasn’t old age was taken hard. Hux had been around death so often that it barely registered anymore. Just a list of observations to add to his growing list, just a peek at the broken insides of what passed for normal people.

  


He didn’t want to know what that said about him, that the death, the vicious murder affected him in such a way that he was driven for justice and nothing more. The more he learned about Francis Fallen the more he tried to distance him from Sul, he wasn’t always successful.

  


“You sure you want to meet the Mayor like this?” Kylo asks pulling up to the curb at the bottom of the small hill.

  


“How else am I supposed to meet him? Make an appointment? You know I’m not actually on this case.”

  


“I know-”

  


Hux turned, the door half open when Ren’s hand grasped tightly around his upper arm, holding him in the car.

  


“What?” Hux’s voice is sharper than he means it to be, the stress and lack of sleep and the fear for Millie crowding in on a mind already ripped apart by memories he thought he had locked away.

  


“We will get your cat back but that’s it. Okay?”

  


“What do you mean?”

  


“Don’t ask any questions about Franny.” Kylo’s voice is dark and low and he sees a flicker of the man that people in this town fear, someone powerful and dangerous.

  


He’s been that person before.

  


He sits up straighter, sets his jaw and glares deep into Kylo’s dark eyes, “I’m going to do my job even if no one wants me to.”

  


“Bren…”

  


“Don’t. You don’t get to call me that. I don’t know exactly why you are protecting Mayor Fallen but I know that you are. Did you do it?” A thought hits Hux in the chest, “Did you know?”

  


“Did I know what?”

  


Hux tries to wrench his arm from the man’s tight hot grip but can’t quite manage it.

  


“Did you know they were going to take Millie? Did you tell them about her? Did you keep me at your house so they could-”

  


“Fuck Hux of course not.” Kylo lets go of him at that, pulls in on himself and shifts into the man he knows rather than the demon everyone else sees. A little smaller, a little unsure, hiding behind bravado, “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  


“Why not? You barely know me.”

  


“I know you better than you think Bren.” The nickname is soft in his mouth as he averts his eyes.

  


Hux narrows his eyes observing the man, taking in the way he’s holding himself, the way he keeps looking at him but pulling away before he can catch his eyes. Hux moves a hand and with the backs of his fingers brushes across the man’s cheek.

  


Kylo’s breath is staggered and his eyes are a little on the desperate side when they finally meet his, a flush in his face.

  


Hux lets out a huff, half scoff, half laugh, “You only think you like me because you don’t know me Kylo.”

  


He’ll get over it, hopefully not until after he at least gets Millie back. He could use a demon begging for his favour, Hux had learned a lot of things over the years and one of them was how to manipulate people that cared about him. He gets out of the car and stands there for a moment, looking up at the oddly imposing building, behind those bricks was a real monster and he had been hunting monsters since he had become one more than twenty years ago.

  


The path up the hill is paved with bricks rather than standard pavement, it seems so oddly frivolous. The edges of the path lined with the same deep red flowers that wrap around the flagpole. Hux never had much time for flowers, he didn’t care for them. He wasn’t allergic to them (although he had used that excuse many a time to keep them awy from him), they reminded him of death and the blood red of this particular variety just drove the idea home. The scent of them was heavy and wet although that may have had more to do with the fact that the sprinklers must have just shut off.

  


There are quick heavy steps behind him signifying Kylo Ren rushing to fall into step with him.

  


“I’m not in love with you or anything if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  


Hux doesn’t even bother to look at him, just a noise in the back of his throat that sounds like he doesn’t believe him. He does and he doesn’t. Every man who's ever said those words to him has been lying to himself. They always ended up loving him, craving his approval above all else, his touch, any scrap of affection he deemed fit to give. He wonders when he stopped being able to actually love. Was it Sul, or was it before that,the death of his mother perhaps…

  


“Just because I want to fuck doesn’t mean I want you to move in or something.”

  


Hux falters turning to look at the man beside him. A messy flush of color is flooding his cheeks and the tips of his large ears, peeking out of his heavy dark hair.

  


“You want to what?”

  


Kylo stops a few steps ahead of him and looks back at him, “You heard me.”

  


“Yes, but I don’t think anyone has ever been that forward with me before.”

  


Hux scans his memories for anyone that brash, that forward, but in the long line of lovers he’s had, of all the men that have cowed to his ambition, who have bent over backwards for him in multiple ways, who had helped to advance his career, gave him valuable sensitive information for a chance at his touch there isn’t a single man who had ever just come out and said it like that.

He is far too scattered for this right now, “I can’t deal with this right now.”

  


“Sure, we get the cat, we go back to my place and deal with this sexual tension.” Kylo nods like the decision has been agreed upon, like it’s set in stone.

  


Sexual tension? Is that what they had? Hux was pretty sure that wasn’t it. That what they had was a strange understanding, monster to monster. The tension between them was entirely due to the fact that Kylo Ren wouldn’t admit to being a con man in need of a physician.

  


He follows him through the large double doors into city hall. The heavy smell of flowers is oppressive. The entire building is oppressive and he went to a private military academy, he should know. It's all dark wood and heavy old curtains, it's screaming old money, it reminds him of the parties his father used to drag him to in the summers or diplomatic galas he always found a reason to leave early.

  


"Is it always like this?" He asks as they walk past a startles woman at a reception desk and up the wide sweeping staircase.

  


"Like what?"

  


_Like a funeral home._

  


“The flowers are new but yeah it pretty much always felt like someone had died.” Kylo responds with a lazy roll of his wrist, he doesn’t even turn as he ascends the stairs.

  


Kylo weaves them through wide dark hallways and narrow stairwells, every member of staff that they see takes one horrified look at Ren and decides they are desperately needed elsewhere. One old man even crosses himself quickly before dodging through a door that Hux is ninety percent sure is a broom closet.

  


They make it to a large ornately carved wooden door and Kylo stops short of bursting through this one like all the others. The Mayor must be on the other side.

  


“Do not ask about Franny.” Kylo tells him darkly.

  


“Why not?”

  


“Snoke doesn’t want you on that case. If you want to stay here, you need to keep the old man happy.” Kylo shifts oddly from side to side, “You do want to stay here don’t you?”

  


The question is heavy and loaded and not really suited for where they are. The way he says it makes it sound like it should be whispered in the privacy of Kylo’s bedroom, in the shared space between them filled with hot breath and promises.

  


Fuck maybe Kylo was write about that sexual tension because his body feels all at once heavy and electric.

  


“I’ll be a good little deputy Ren, promise.”

  


Kylo still hesitates.

  


“What is it Ren?”

  


Ren is staring somewhere around Hux’s right shin, his dark wavy hair falling into his face, “Don’t believe everything they say about me.”

  


Hux puts a heavy hand on Kylo’s shoulder, pulling the man’s attention up to his face, they are close but not close enough for the glassy look and wetting of lips to do anything. He smirks at the slightly taller man, “I haven’t believed anything anyone has said about you Ren. I doubt I’ll start now.”

  


Kylo seems insulted and somehow pleased at the sametime. He turns away and throws the heavy door open in such a way that it cracks against the wall in a deafening smack. Kylo walks into the room, back straight, footsteps light and graceful, his fingers flexing in the air in what he thinks is a childish attempt at intimidation but seems to work on the people in the room.

  


And there he is.

  


The man who had beaten his son to death.

  


He can’t help the disgusted curl of his lip as he settles in front of the desk next to Kylo Ren.

  


The man is a desperate looking man, dark hair out of place, his fingers having raked through too many times. He has the eyes of a weasel, dark beady things. He’s a large man, thick looking, Hux would put money on him peaking in high school, still trying to put on a letterman’s jacket and trying to relive glory days.

  


“What do you want?” Mayor Fallan asks Ren, his voice shaking quietly, “Did Snoke send you? I told him I was-”

  


“That’s not why I am here Mayor.” Kylo cuts him off and Hux hates him for it. A big part of questioning someone was giving them enough rope to hang themselves with. At least that’s what his father had taught him. It hadn’t been a tactic that had let him down yet.

  


“Then why?” Fallen looks nervously away and his gaze lands on Hux. He had never met a man whose gaze had felt slimy before, “Who are you?”

  


“I am Deputy Brendol Hux, I have some questions to ask you. I know this is a trying time for you, but please just do the best you can.” Hux lets the calm cool words slide past his tongue as he pulls the newer notebook out of his breast pocket and flips to an empty page.

  


 


	12. How to break into a house in broad daylight

  
  


Brendol?

  
  


What the hell kind of name was that?

  
  


Was that a fake name?

  
  


Bren was short for Brendol?

  
  


Kylo takes a long look at Hux (Brendol) as he interrogates the Mayor. Hux is infinitely more interesting than the broken desperation that falls off the larger slime of a man behind the desk. There the Mayor is grasping at what is left of his authority to try and intimidate Hux, Hux easily has the most agency of anyone in the room.

  
  


Kylo can feel the whirlwind of Hux’s mind, his fingers constantly writing in his little notebook even when nobody's saying anything.

  
  


Snoke always said people said more in their silences than they ever said with their mouths. It seems that Hux agrees. It must be unnerving for whoever is on the other end of Hux’s cold hard eyes, firm jaw, ramrod posture. Because as much of a hurricane that Hux was the Mayor is a mess.

  
  


“As you may or maynot be aware your son was in a relationship with the missing boy, Mr. Curtis.”

  
  


“Glenn…” There is a twitch to the mayor as he says the name.

  
  


Kylo narrows his eyes at the sallow man and pulls out thoughts just on the surface of his mind, he can’t do much more without hurting everyone involved. He’s thinking about how Hux looks a lot like _that bastard_ Glenn.

  
  


“So you were aware of your son’s involvement with Glenn then.”

  
  


“They thought they were so sneaky, that I wouldn’t know what was going on in my own house. Like they weren’t walking down back alley’s in my town holding hands.” There was a strained sound to the man’s voice. He’s known Charles Fallen for a little while now, he had been mayor for about ten years.

  
  


It had been Kylo’s first job.

  
  


Helping Snoke with Fallen’s campaign.

  
  


He had never really liked the man, and the way he talked about Glenn, the acidic way he thought about Franny, just seemed to prove his dislike justified. There was very little grief about the man, sure he was in black, sure his eyes were puffy and red from crying but everything about the grief was surface.

  
  


The loss of a son, of a loved one, of a father, he ad felt it, experienced it, it stained you to the core, it rooted in deep.

  
  


Chucky Fallen was upset about his son, he was sad but it wasn’t the same kind of grief that even Mrs. Curtis felt with her son only missing.

  
  


“You didn’t approve of your son’s… preferences?” Hux asks, voice like sharpened steel.

  
  


“I wouldn’t say that.”

  
  


“Would you say that you believed that Francis and Glenn were going to hell for what they were doing?”

  
  


“I… no.”

  
  


Liar.

  
  


He could feel the burnt taste in his mouth of the mayor’s disgust.

  
  


“Really?” Hux flips through his notebook, flipping back to a different page, a page that Kylo can see is blank, “I have written down here that only a month ago you were seen arguing with your son and yelled some choice slurs at him, including being very graphic about,” Hux cleared his throat and looked like he was reading off the blank page, “The special place in hell for people like you.”

  
  


Kylo had almost forgotten about that, he had heard from Phasma about the scene they had caused (yelling and throwing things, this very office had been practically ripped apart. Phasma’s girlfriend had told her all about it.) he imagined Hux had heard from her as well. Phasma as tough and stoic as she seemed loved a bit of gossip when she had a couple of pints in her.

  
  


“That was a misunderstanding. That wasn’t about Glenn.”

  
  


“I see.” Hux flips back to his original page and makes note of his response.

  
  


Hux doesn’t ask anything for a few moments and it makes the mayor squirm in his seat, it makes the thugs at his sides, against the walls watching nervous. He’d be nervous too looking at Hux judging and finding everyone lacking. He wondered if this was what he had been like in the military. If he had been such a force, he knew from the snippets of his past just the kind of manipulative man he could be and he was manipulating everyone in this room as well.

  
  


Hux was a puppet master, Kylo couldn’t help but think that he was horribly wasted in this hellhole.

  
  


He could see Hux standing sharp to attention in front of the desk in the dress whites that were hanging in his closet in that cleaners bag. He didn’t know what any of the medals pinned to his chest meant, if they were supplied by his own imagination or by the force but Hux was a storm made solid in every way that Kylo could think of.

  
  


He would devastate this entire town and so much of him wanted to let him do it. Something in the way Snoke had told him to keep an eye on the man, to keep him away from the real case, keep him distracted until he was malleable lead him to believe that Snoke was afraid of Hux.

  
  


Hux had started talking again at some point but Kylo hadn’t heard any of the actual words, he had been distracted by the flicker of his clothes and the oppressive weight of the force.

  
  


Where was Hux's cat?

  
  


He hadn't asked a single question about the car, about the catnaping, or the tossing of his apartment, what had they been looking for anyway?

  
  


Kylo looked between the two thugs waiting on the sidelines praying to every God they could remember not to have to step in. He could feel the quiver of their fear in the air. Neither wanted to go against Kylo.

  
  


No one in this town was stupid enough to go against Kylo Ren, resident psychic and psycho. That's what some people called him.

  
  


He didn't mind so much, the respect that went along with the fear to stave off any loneliness that might have come from being so feared.

  
  


Not to mention when Snoke had taken him in he had gained a sister in Phasma, who loved him even when he had his episodes (violent or vision alike).

  
  


There was something different about this fear, it wasn't directed at him like it normally was... No.

  
  


Jesus they are afraid of Hux.

  
  


Deputy Ginger.

  
  


Afraid of the way he wasn't afraid, afraid that he would see straight through them, afraid that the rumors they had heard separately and then shared with each other that Deputy Hux had somehow managed to tame Kylo Ren.

  
  


He took more than a little offence to that really. Did people really think he had been _tamed_? Like some animal?

  
  


Actually that did sound right, he was a demon, a monster, an animal to these people. It wasn't surprising that they would use the word tamed.

  
  


It wasn't true of course.

  
  


He looked at Hux and noticed the closeness, they were standing close, they had overlapped their personal spaces and he hadn't even noticed.

  
  


Kylo wondered if Hux had heard any of those rumors, what he thought of them. He didn't want to be tamed, but the idea of having that perceived closeness was beyond appealing. Hux had seemed a little shocked at how forward he had been outside but hadn't made any mention against wanted that.

  
  


Wanting to fuck.

  
  


Wanting to be wrapped up in each other, learning each other carnally, to use each other in a way that Kylo had only seen in movies.

  
  


He finds his eyes drawn to the deputy's pale pink lips as they move.

  
  


"Is there anywhere you can think that Glenn and your son went that might be helpful to find Glenn? Anywhere they felt safe?" Hux's tongue darted out and wet his lips.

  
  


"You think Glenn is still around here?"

  
  


"I have found evidence that leads me to believe he is out on the fringes somewhere waiting for your son to meet him."

  
  


"Evidence..."

  
  


"Yes. It seems they were planning on starting a life together in a different town."

  
  


"Are... Are you close to finding him?"

  
  


"Yes."

  
  


Hux doesn't give any details, no flourishes, or embellishments to try and make them believe he is telling the truth. Hux has all the facts in his hand and he's only letting go of what he absolutely must in order to get the things he wants from the Mayor.

  
  


There was a spike of fear in the room, all three men on the opposite side of the desk were afraid.

  
  


Afraid Hux knew.

  
  


He did after all he had always known he just needed the facts to back him up.

  
  


What they were all so collectively afraid that Hux knew something but what that something was he couldn't quite catch.

  
  


Was it the catnaping or something far more murderous.

  
  


_Glenn is still here. Glenn must have the duffle bag. Need to find him._

  
  


The mayor's thoughts came at him like sharp needles in his skin, sharp, clear and painful.

  
  


The duffle bag? He narrowed his eyes at the mayor, hunched over like they could protect himself from Hux's line of inquiry, the light around him tinged blue and the man's hands and sleeves were stained blood red.

  
  


He hadn't wanted Hux go be right. He needed to talk to Snoke. So many things were just, off, about this, about the force since Hux came along, everything and anything that could feel wrong did. Now with this in top of everything, the force showing him that the mayor was guilty?

  
  


He needed to know what was in that duffle bag before he did anything else. He just had to figure out where Franny had put it before he died because it wasn't with Glenn and it sure as hell wasn't anywhere that his father had noticed so far.

  
  


Hux's phone goes off and for a second it appears that Hux is going to ignore it. He must remember that he had left the number as Glenn's emergency, someone wants me dead contact.

  
  


He pulls it out of his pocket, looks at the number and calmly puts his notebook and pen away.

  
  


"If you'll excuse me gentleman," Hux's flat steel tone makes it obvious he doesn't think that term applies to any of them, "I have to take this."

  
  


Hux walks away sharply, he's seen him move smoothly but every movement he's made in this room has been sharp and calculated. Hux is a puppet master, nudging his puppets together so they will tangle in their own strings. He'd be impressed if he wasn't positive that he was one of the puppets on Hux's stage.

  
  


Fuck it he's impressed anyway. Hux answers his phone whispering slow and low and calm as he stands in front of the doors hand on the handle.

  
  


Kylo watches the way the Mayor and the other two men watching Hux with fear and worry in there eyes.

  
  


Hux's agency is undeniable. He couldn't place exactly where it came from, his military upbringing perhaps, always being the best at what he did maybe. It was different from Snoke, the way Snoke exuded his importance was all overbearing power and the threat of falling from his favour. Hux was a different animal.

  
  


Hux reminded him a lot more of his mother-

  
  


Shit that train of thought needed to stop immediately.

  
  


Hux slips from the room to take the call and everyone turns their attention back to Kylo instead.

  
  


"I thought we had an agreement?" Fallen asks voice rough and shaking a little. His hands are clenched tightly.

  
  


"What are you on about Fallen?"

  
  


"Snoke told me I'd have protection. I heard that you were under the redheads thumb I just didn't want to believe it."

  
  


Under Hux's thumb? That was outrageous. A boiling rage rises in Kylo, "Is that why you had your thugs take his fucking cat? As insurance? Pathetic."

  
  


"I did no such thing." Fallen yells standing shaking palms pressed hard against his desk.

  
  


Lies.

  
  


It even tastes like a lie. The man is beyond desperate, his mind keeps grabbing desperately at the thought of that duffle bag.

  
  


It's the same one he had seen in his vision of Francis and Glenn.

  
  


Whatever is in it the mayor wants, needs, and he thinks that Glenn has it. Hiding somewhere waiting to strike out and bring everything he's worked so hard so crumbling down around him.

  
  


Hux steps back into the room, "That will be all for now gentlemen. Thank you for your time. You have my condolences Mayor." Hux turns his blue green eyes on him and without saying anything he knows that Hux needs him for something.

  
  


He hopes it's sex, it won't be, but he can dream.

  
  


Kylo follows him back out into the hall, closing the door tightly behind him.

  
  


"Did you get everything you needed?"

  
  


"I think so. I need you to drop me off at the General hospital."

  
  


"Are you hurt?" There is an unfortunate amount of concern slipping into his tone.

  
  


"No. Of course not. I just need to talk to someone."

  
  


"I'll go with you."

  
  


"I'd rather you didn't. They won't talk if you're there."

  
  


"I'll make them." He tells him firmly as they walk back down through the maze of narrow back hallways.

  
  


"You're the reason they are in the hospital in the first place Kylo."

  
  


Kylo stops dead on the stair causing Hux to bump into his back. Hux smells of coffee, waffles and anxiety. He steps up onto Hux's step, shepherding him against the wall. Keeping his arms on either side of the man to keep him from leaving.

  
  


"You're going to talk to Poe? Why? He has nothing to do with your cat."

  
  


"I know that Kylo-"

  
  


"I said, I told you not to ask about Francis, we agreed that we were only here to get answers about your cat."

  
  


"No we didn't." Hux's hands are balled into fists at his sides but he's staring right through Kylo, which is impressive given their closeness, "You said we would get my cat and go back to your place to _fuck_. None of which I agreed with."

  
  


"You don't want-" Kylo swallows the sudden bout of insecurity that rushes up, the heat in his cheeks as Hux tells him relatively clearly that he wasn't interested. Which was a lie.

  
  


He knew it was a lie.

  
  


The force told him it was true.

  
  


Hux practically sang out in the force, his blood red soul begging for Kylo.

  
  


"You don't want your cat back?"

  
  


"Of course I do."

  
  


"Then why would you do this? You don't know these people, they will kill your cat. They are desperate."

  
  


"Desperate people make mistakes. Fallen will make a mistake and then I have him."

  
  


"You want..." Kylo shook his head slowly, "you would endanger your cat for this? You love that stupid cat." Hux's mind was littered with thoughts of Millie.  Ren was positive that Hux loved that stupid large ill named cat more than anything else in his horrible life.

  
  


Except maybe the thin brunette boy but that wasn’t the point.

  
  


Hux looks down at the limited space between them, "Justice for a boy murdered by his own father for wanting to start a new life with Glenn somewhere is more important than my cat."

  
  


"Say her name Hux."

  
  


"What?"

  
  


"Say the cat’s name and tell me again."

  
  


An eerie stillness fell over Hux as he looked into Kylo's eyes instead of past them, "Justice for Francis Fallen and Glenn's safety have to come before Millicent."

  
  


"Brendol..." The name feels warm in his mouth, heavy and it falls into the space between them that he is surprisingly hard to maintain.

  
  


"She's as good as dead anyway. You were in that room with me. He's a desperate and stupid man and he keeps similar company. Francis is dead, Millie is as good as dead but Glenn could still be in danger." Hux let's out a huff of defeated breath that hits Kylo on the mouth, "Take me to the hospital Ren. Maybe I can save someone."

  
  


He puts a warm hand on Kylo's shoulder and pushes gently. Kylo isn't sure he wants to let Hux go, to let him out of this cage he's made for him to hide in. He had seemed so in charge in the office, so in control, but the anger in the man was fading leaving nothing but a feeling of uselessness in its wake that Kylo couldn't stand.

  
  


He moves and follows Hux down the stairs out the side of the building and into the car.

  
  


They drive in silence, Kylo can't think of a damn thing to say but when Hux gets out of the car and disappears into the hospital he knows what he needs to do.

  
  


He needs to rescue Hux's stupid cat, and he needs to find out what's in that duffle bag that was so important

  
  


_

  
  


How do you break into a house?

  
  


Kylo leaned against his car looking across the street at the Fallen house.

  
  


He had watched a lot of movies, he should know how to do this.

  
  


It’s just…

  
  


They usually only ever did it in the dark.

  
  


Where there different rules for breaking into a house in broad daylight?

  
  


Maybe he should have lunch first.

  
  


Maybe he could order a pizza for him and Glenn.

  
  


He ran a hand through his unruly hair, it had tangled somewhere between the cold shower and now, he hadn’t bothered to brush it, not with Hux so close, looking at him like something sexual might just happen by accident.

  
  


Kylo didn’t think for a second that deputy gingersnap would let those bastards keep his cat in exchange for incriminating evidence. He didn’t even know Francis, didn’t know anyone in this town.

  
  


No way was that worth the life of the cat he had dragged across the country with him.

  
  


Kylo certainly wouldn’t have risked it.

  
  


Then again, he thought as he finally moved to the house, wasn’t he doing basically the same thing? He didn’t know Hux, had known him days, not even a full week and here he was going against Snoke’s orders.

  
  


Snoke the man who had taken him in, protected him, clothed him, fed him, made sure he finished school, gave him his fucking name.

  
  


And he was going against that loyalty, something that just last week he would have thought unbreakable. Going against that for some red head.

  
  


_A really hot red head._

  
  


Kylo walked the perimeter of the house looking for some weak point mind only half on the task, his mind filling with just how attractive he found Hux.

  
  


Maybe he just had a thing for redheads. He always had enjoyed Some Kind of Wonderful maybe more than he should.

  
  


He’d say it was the challenge but he’d never cared for those before. He liked things and people that came easy. It was just less stressful. What didn’t come easily a little bit of pressure, either physical or mental with the force, had always secured him what he wanted.

  
  


Snoke had always encouraged using his abilities that way. It had been a long time since anyone had stood up to him, when people did that now, they ended up in the hospital.

  
  


So why was it that he hadn’t manhandled Hux.

  
  


He had let Hux manhandle him.

  
  


No wonder there were rumors flying around the town about his relationship with Hux. Arkanis was not used to it’s resident psychic/muscle taking shit from anyone that wasn’t Phasma or Snoke (family).

  
  


Kylo looked up at one of the second floor windows, it was open a crack, he could do it. He’d just climb the trellis up to the window and pull himself up. People did it in movies all the time.

  
  


He shoves the toe of his boot into the lattice and reaches up to wrap his fingers around sun bleached wood and lush green leaves to haul himself up towards the open window.

  
  


The whole aperatice manages to hold his weight for a good three minutes. Just long enough for him to climb half way up the wall before a stomach tightening, skin chilling snap sound rings out.

  
  


An unintelligible roar of noise rips from his throat as he loses to gravity, his insides frozen and weightless for a moment until he crashes painfully to the back patio.

  
  


He lies there, flat on his back staring up at the cloudy sky.

  
  


This is stupid.

  
  


This is stupid. Francis was too smart to leave the duffle bag here when it was so coveted, and they couldn't be stupid enough to have Millie here? So what was he looking for? Clues? Since when had he become Nancy Drew.

  
  


"What are you doing?"

  
  


Kylo squeezes his eyes closed and sighs.

  
  


Of course.

  
  


He turns his head to look up, way up, to see Phasma standing above him. Her uniform pristine, her buckles too shiny, and she had those annoying chrome aviators that she loved so much.

  
  


It made her seem taller than he knew her to be. Turned her into some Greek statue, something made of stone.

  
  


"How did I know this prowler was you?" She asks nudging him with her boot.

  
  


He doesn't bother to move. Just stares up past her unnaturally platinum hair at the open window taunting him.

  
  


"What happened last night between you and Red?" Phasma asks, voice somewhere between concerned and amused. He must be a sight to see laying flat on his back surrounded and tangled in snapped wood and unhappy vines.

  
  


He makes a noise at the back of his throat that he's not even sure what it's supposed to mean.

  
  


"Come on Kylo. What's going on here? The mayor just called talking about how you and your boyfriend were harassing him."

  
  


Kylo pushes himself up onto his elbows, "Hux and I are not together. Why does everyone keep saying that?"

  
  


"Honestly?" She asks holding her hand out to him.

  
  


With a sigh he takes it and let's her pull him up.

  
  


"I've never seen you behave so well for someone before. You haven't had a fit since you met him. No outbursts, no property damage, or assault. Plus the way you look at him-"

  
  


Like he wants to tear him apart carnally, like he wants to run his hands through his stupid perfect hair, like he wants to see him undone.

  
  


"- like he's this beautiful mystery you want to solve."

  
  


Okay that wasn't the way he thought he was looking at Hux.

  
  


"Like he's someone important and I have never seen you look at anyone like that before." She's still holding his hand, keeping him close like she thinks he'll flee (it wasn't that bad an idea actually), she squeezes his hand and they slip into the handshake they had made as teenagers, it's a comfortable thing, "So where is Red?"

  
  


"Bren is doing exactly what I'm supposed to keep him from doing."

  
  


"He's working on my case." She sounds almost relieved but neither will say anything about it. There were times when Snokes orders hadnt sat right with her but they've been ignoring that for years and now didn't seem like a good time to break tradition, "and your letting him? We need to talk about this Ky..."

  
  


He shakes his head and steps back away from her, turning his attention back to the house.

  
  


"Kylo..."

  
  


"What do you think happened on Monday after Breakfast Club? Do you think they were still friends?"

  
  


"Really Kylo? You always do this..." She sighs, defeated, "I don't know, probably not." She leaves him in the backyard alone contemplating the strength of friendship, peer pressure and how the fuck to get into this God damn house.

  
  


Phasma kicks a flower pot over on her way out but doesn't look back.

  
  


When the sun comes out from behind a cloud he notices something shimmering in the spilt dirt.

  
  


A spare key. Snagging it and looking both ways before sliding it into the lock he hopes that Hux is having better luck than him. He's pretty sure his back is going to bruise something fierce from the fall.

 

The kitchen is that too white of magazines, like no one really lived there and it smelled too strongly of lemons. It was like stepping into a mister clean commercial. It was unsettling. Even the force shivered with distaste around him as he pushed through the kitchen in search of Franny's bedroom.

 

The walls were lined with unnatural photo's of the Fallen's and every since one where Franny and the mayor were alone there was something stiff and strange about the younger. His eyes held something not quite freightened and the mayors grip on his son's shoulders looked like a vice.

 

They brought to mind the dark bruises of the crime scene photos and made his stomach churn.

 

The sooner he found some sort of clue as to the whereabouts of that damned duffle bag the sooner he could get the hell out of this place.

 

Franny's room is at the end of the hall and when he pushes the door open to step in it feels like he's been dunked in ice cold water, its painful and oppressive and he has to tighten his grip of the doorknob to keep himself upright.

 

He takes a moment trying to manage the ice cold pain shooting through the force of the room but the moment he takes his hand off the handle and takes another step into the room it crashes down on his again, heavy enough to bring him to his knees.

 

His body is trying to twist up against itself, his hands shake and he's sure that he's going to vomit.

 

He crawls the short distance to the grab the garbage can at the head of the bed just glad that Hux isn't around to see him like this.

 

He stares down at the contents of a dead boy's garbage can and tries to even his breathing when he notices a ripped up photo at the bottom of the near empty can.

 

With trembling fingers he pulls the pieces of the photo back together in his hand. It's a clearning, he knows this place, it's out in Jasko's woods...

 

_The photo seems to get larger until the scene is all around him. Just the cool breaze of a night and the smell of freash dirt as Francis Fallen stands in front of him throwing dirt on a blue duffle bag._

 

The duffle bag!

 

The woods fal away until he is sitting once again on the floor of the boy's bedroom, the oppressive, sharp icy quality of the air is gone.

 

He needs to get out of here,he needs to go to the woods and get that damn duffle bag. See what's important enough to kill for.

 

Kylo is rushing out the house back the way he came when the sound of something knocking over stops him in his tracks. It sounds like glass and he walks slowly towards the sound, being as quiet as possible.

 

He's standing in front of the closed office door, hand on the doorknob ready to rip it open and catch the new intruder by surprise when there's another crashing sound followed by a soft meow.

 

“Holy shit! Millie?” He asks ripping open the door.

 

There sitting admist broken photo frames, and painted china is Hux's stupid orange cat, fluffy and as mean looking as ever.

 

“Come here girl.” Kylo croaches down, arms open waiting for the cat to come to him, “I guess they are stupid enough to keep you here huh.” He tells her as she climbs up his arm, claws digging into flesh.

  
  
  


 


	13. Jasko's woods

  
  


He didn't know what Kylo was doing but he hoped the man was having more luck then he was.

  
  


Hux wasn't the type of man to sneak around, he had always stood out a little too much for that to be an effective manoeuvre, the red hair, sharp eyes and straight back had made him too memorable for covert work.

  
  


He was a planner, a strategist, a puppet master.

  
  


So creeping around the back of the hosiptal, making his way through narrow disused corridors lined with large bulky instruments that needed repair was certainly not his preferred method of getting to Poe Dameron's room.

  
  


He couldn't use his preferred method. He wasn't the puppet master in this town and Snoke had apparently already set up a system that Hux and possibly even Kylo were not allowed to visit Dameron.

  
  


Not without a call to him. And since he was supposed to be off this case, since he obviously wasn't going to tell anyone about Glenn, since he wasn't exactly the old man behind the counters type he was climbing over ancient medical equipment on his way to the service elevator.

  
  


The elevator doors open with a slow shik and he tumbles relieved into the tall metal box. There is no music, thank God, as he rides the service elevator up to the correct floor and slips out unnoticed.

  
  


The service elevator opens up down the hall past the nurses station so he easily makes it to Dameron's room. At least something about this mess was easy.

  
  


"What took so long?" Finn asks before ushering him into the room, "Poe, this is deputy Hux..."

  
  


The bottom of Hux's stomach drops out when he finally lays eyes on Poe Dameron ace reporter. He's battered, the bruising across his face is yellow green now but extensive. Any more damage and the man might have lost an eye. The man has his arm in a cast, a leg and his chest looks stiff under that terrible green gown like he's sporting some slowly mending ribs.

  
  


Fuck.

  
  


Did Kylo really do this?

  
  


Kylo?

  
  


Kylo Ren, who looked huge and powerful and who he had to pull out of the shower this morning his lips blue, his body numb?

  
  


How?

  
  


Hux carefully schools his features and nods at Dameron, who in spite of the collosal beating he must have received is still smiling brightly.

  
  


Handsome and apparently harty.

  
  


"You're the new deputy then? Finn's replacement? Where did they get you from then?"  Poe is sizing him up with sharp eyes and a glimmer of respect settles in Hux for the man. He may be beaten but he certainly wasn't out of the game.

  
  


"Perhaps we can go into my background another time Mr. Dameron. I have some questions about Francis."

  
  


Something crosses the man's battered face before his jaw squares and his eyes harden, "What makes you think I know anything about Frankie."

  
  


Hux couldn't help the flicker of a smile that flew across his face at the use of Frankie rather than Franny. There was respect there that made Hux feel like he was right. Like maybe he could come out of this whole thing unscathed. He hadn't gotten to Arkanis and promptly lost his mind, there was just a dizzying quality to being around Kylo that he'd have to get used to.

  
  


"Your boyfriend happened to let slip that Francis had tried to visit you."

  
  


Poe looks quickly at Finn who is standing guard at the door, the younger man looks flustered.

  
  


"He's trying to find out who killed him Poe."

  
  


"I thought you didn't trust the department anymore Finn?"

  
  


Hux doesn't take his eyes off of Poe as he talks to Finn, there is something more open about his face when he's looking at the former deputy, something honest that he's sure he can exploit.

  
  


"Hux isn't like the other deputies Poe..."

  
  


"Not yet anyway." Poe turns his attention back to Hux, trying to stare through him, to see into him to some truth. He falls short and it's a relief after the deep looks he gets from Kylo.

  
  


"Just tell me what Francis told you."

  
  


"The article you mean? About his father. Have you met the mayor?"

  
  


He really wished he hadn't needed to. The man was desperation given human form. He reeked of failure in a way that made his position make no sense whatsoever. On the other hand he seemed like he would be an easy man to manipulate. He was just worried who exactly was pulling the man's strings and what was going to happen now that some of those strings had snapped.

  
  


"I've had the displeasure unfortunately." Hux says instead.

  
  


"Yes well Frankie had taken some files that proved that the mayor had gained his illustrious position by less than legal means."

  
  


"And you ran the article without seeing these files?"

  
  


"I had copies." Poe's eyes harden. He certainly didn't seem to care for people insinuating that he had played fast and loose with the facts.

  
  


"Do you have them now? Do you know where Francis kept the originals?"

  
  


"Frankie kept the files in a duffle bag, a light blue nylon thing with black straps. I had seen it once but he kept it as insurance." Poe looks down at his hands, at the tan fingertips that poke out from the white plaster. There is a mix of wistful sorrow on his face as he continues, "He was such a smart kid... How did he get himself in a position to get killed like that? He was going away with Glenn right away. I had offered him my old car and a couple thousand dollars to make sure they didn't end up on the street..."

  
  


"With you in the hospital I'm sure he didn't think he had any other choice."

  
  


"Yes well that certainly wasn't my choice now was it." Poe glares, eyes hard and narrowed, jaw clenched as he looks at Hux. Like it was somehow Hux's fault when he had only just gotten into town at the time.

  
  


"I'd like to remind you Mr. Dameron that it wasn't my fault either."

  
  


"No. Not yours but I've heard how friendly you've gotten with Ren."

  
  


"Ren has been assigned to keep my off the Fallen case, nothing more, and as you can see he's doing a piss poor job of it. Can we please get back to Francis and this duffle bag?"

  
  


"So you deny spending the night with Ren then?"

  
  


"I haven't slept in two days Mr. Dameron, I have been trying to bring the killer of Francis to justice. I haven't exactly had any time for any trysts if that is what you are insinuating."

  
  


"Did he enjoy the waffles this morning?" Finn asks moving to stand next to Poe. The reporter had created an unwavering loyalty in his boyfriend that Hux would admire if this wasn't detrimental to the case he was trying to build.

  
  


Hux wanted to lay a strip into these men, he really did. He didn't care what their experiences with the law were before he got to town, he didn't care that Kylo Ren, who the entire town had pegged for his boyfriend, had put Poe in this hospital bed. All he cared about was that he had a fucking murderer to put in jail and a seventeen year old redhead cowering in Kylo's house to deal with.

  
  


"Can you think of any places Francis may have hid this duffle? Any place he thought particularly safe?" He pressed on turning his cold words sharp, "There's still a kid out there that could be in danger Mr. Dameron and I'd really rather not be solving another murder so soon." The words cut at the men then.

  
  


"Do you really think Glenn is still around?"

  
  


"Still waiting for Francis to meet him so they can start their life together? Worrying out there somewhere about what is taking so long? Sticking just close enough to town that the men who did that to Francis could still find him? Do I think that Glenn would wait until the earth swallowed him whole before moving on without Francis? Yes. Yes I am positive that Glenn is out there still, too close to be safe until Francis' killer is behind bars." He took a deep breath looking down at his scribbled notes, at the rough sketch of Poe and Finn and the breath turned too easily into a sigh, "So I will ask again Mr. Dameron, was there anywhere you can think of that Francis would have felt safe to keep his leverage?"

  
  


With downturned mouth, dark eyes and sullen posture Poe took Finn's hand in his plastered and bandaged hands.

  
  


"There's a place... In the forest north of town. Francis told me he used to take Glenn there all the time. If he had a chance to put it anywhere it'd be there. If you find Glenn he should be able to take you there."

  
  


"Thank you for your cooperation Mr. Dameron." Hux closes his notebook and stuffs it safely back into his pocket before starting for the door. He's weighing his options because he'd really rather not climb over all that equipment again.

  
  


"I didn't think it would end this way." Poe tells him and he sounds heavy with guilt, "When Frankie came to me with the scoop I really thought we could make this town a better place."

  
  


"It's not your fault Poe." Finn comforts him, "This town eats every good intention, it twists everything. This isn't your fault, Frankie's death-"

  
  


Hux looks away as Finn wraps his arms around the injured man carefully and Poe clings to him.

  
  


Clings to him like Finn could somehow magically undo all the horrible things that had happened. Hux has his hand on the door and wonders if everything and everyone in this town was going to remind him of his ghosts.

  
  


Because the two men clinging to each other, beaten but trying not to give up the fight was everything good he remembered about Sul.

  
  


He does something he normally never would. He takes a moment to let words of comfort fall from his lips when they won't benefit him or the case.

  
  


"This wasn't you Dameron. We both know who did this, who killed Francis Fallen and with your information I'll make sure he never gets away with anything again."

  
  


He leaves before he can hear Finn or Poe tell him something as awful as good luck. This wasn’t luck. This was building a case, meticulously writing down and collecting everything this town could offer on Mayor Fallen. With Poe’s testament, with Glenn’s and the information he’s been able to gather, it would be enough everywhere else.

  
  


Snoke wanted him to learn what kind of town this was. Well he had figured it out and he knew that nothing would happen to Fallen without the information in that duffle bag. This was a corrupt backwater shit of a town. A town that he could leave any time he wanted.

  
  


There was nothing holding him here really. What? His cat? He could get another cat(as much as the thought turned his stomach). Kylo? That was absurd. He didn’t have any feelings for Kylo. The only thing he wanted from Kylo Ren was for him to stop saying his name like a lover. For him to stop looking at him like he was peering into his soul and was the only person who had ever found it acceptable. Nothing wanting, nothing missing.

  
  


Hux shakes his head as he walks past the nurses station, he didn’t care to bruise himself on the old equipment littered across the backway. He stands outside the hospital for a long moment trying to sort everything out in his head.

  
  


He knew he wasn’t leaving. He didn’t like this town anymore than any of the other places he had been stationed, didn’t feel any particular draw to the town itself but maybe too many of these people pulled at feelings he had long thought he had buried.

  
  


Buries behind the academy, under the large maple in that stupid plastic lunchbox.

  
  


Cursing quietly to himself he starts the walk towards Kylo’s house. He needs Glenn if he’s ever going to find that blasted duffle bag.

  
  


-

  
  


Kylo’s house is a welcome sight after the way too long walk back. He hadn’t realised how far the house really was. The sun is going down already. He’ll need his flashlight from the station, and he’ll need to borrow Kylo’s car (he's sure that will go over well)… which isn’t in the driveway.

  
  


Where is he anyway?

  
  


Hux pulls his phone out of his pocket to check to see if he’s gotten any messages from him. He’s surprised to find a message from Andersen waiting for him. He shoves the phone back into his pocket, Andersen can wait until he’s sorted out this mess and dealt with the mayor. Andersen's best quality always had been his patience... Well his second best quality but now really wasn't the time to get into that.

  
  


The house looks significantly more ominous in the glooming, long shadows stretching out for him the entire house seemed so much more Kylo this way.

  
  


Stepping up to the door he hopes that Kylo will be along shortly.

  
  


So they can use his car. Not for any other reason. No matter how often everyone in this town called Kylo his boyfriend it didn't make it so.

  
  


Hux's knuckles barely press hard enough on the door to make a sound at all. The door giving way and swinging lazily inward.

  
  


"Shit."

  
  


Hux pulls his baton out of his belt, snapping his wrist down towards his leg, listening to the click of expansion as he moves slowly into the house.

  
  


Someone is in the house, he can feel it. He brings the baton up to his shoulder, getting into the position he had memories from his textbooks.

  
  


He can see the flicker of the television through the beaded curtains of Kylo's 'legitimate' business. He has to leave those beaded curtains for last or he'll give away his position. He'll go counterclockwise, his preferred method of sweep anyway.

  
  


It's been a long time since he's seen any form of combat, and the long walk from the hospital has this side tight and crying out for ice and heat and rest.

  
  


He can't give it any of that. He clears the dining room (still painfully messy) and curses himself for thinking he could expect any place to be safe for Glenn in this hellhole.

  
  


He knocks the kitchen door open, his attention immediately drawn to behind the now open door. One too many training sims where he got ambushed from behind a door had stuck with him even after all these years.

  
  


A fist, fat with scabbed knuckles comes barrelling out of the dim behind the door. Hux swings across his body with the baton to knock the man's wrist hard.

  
  


He lets out a yeowl of pain and jumps back from Hux giving him enough time to look around the kitchen. It's trashed. The entire house seems to be turned over. Maybe this is the same man who had turned his apartment, taken Millie.

  
  


If the man is here then Glenn...

  
  


Hux looks around to find Glenn hiding under the table, he's been beaten and it boils Hux's blood.

  
  


"Glenn are you-"

  
  


"Hux look o-"

  
  


He doesn't get to finish his warning Hux gets a fist to the mouth someone's knuckles cutting against his teeth as a shockwave of pain and the taste of blood explodes across his senses.

  
  


There's another man and Hux will have to find time to berate himself afterwards for sloppy work. Right now he ducks and weaves as the second man, a thug, thick and stupid looking and awfully fucking familiar tries to send another fist through Hux.

  
  


The glancing blow mostly hits baton.

  
  


Cursing fills the room as the first thug has recuperated enough to rejoin the fray.

  
  


Hux was always on the wiry side and before he roomed with Sul, before the Cadet's he had learned the importance of taking a punch.

  
  


These men don't seemed to have learned that lesson, for every hit Hux takes, bright white pain screaming across his body as parts of his face swell and blood drips down his nose into his mouth, the men take two and while they look better (relatively) there punches and elbows and sharp knees are getting slower.

  
  


A baton to the second thugs side and he's down finally, whimpering and the first thug hesitates.

  
  


"Leave now." Hux tells them spitting blood out onto the white tile of the kitchen, "leave now or you won't be able to. Do you understand me?"

  
  


The one still standing nods his head vigorously and grabs the other man around the shoulders and half pulls him out the kitchen door into the night.

  
  


He waits until he can't hear them fumbling around in the garden before letting himself slump against the wall.

  
  


Glenn quickly closes and locks the door, rushing out of the room to theoretically do the same to the front.

  
  


"Where the fuck is Ren." He hisses moving to the fridge and pulling out the ice pack he had seen in there earlier. It stings and burns as he puts it to his swollen and aching face.

  
  


He leans against the fridge door, trying to even out his breathing, he hadn't been in an actual fight in close to fifteen years. He wouldn't mind if he was never in one again.

  
  


"Are you okay?" Glenn asks softly.

  
  


That's stupid. Of course he's not fucking okay.

  
  


"That's stupid, of course you're not..." Glenn curses at himself and Hux leans away from the fridge, pulling the ice pack from his face.

  
  


"How did this happen?"

  
  


"The mayor's men..."

  
  


That's why they had seemed so familiar then.

  
  


"I don't know how they got in. They seemed surprised to find me here... They were looking for something."

  
  


The faulty lock on the kitchen door then. The way he had gotten in while they had been asleep. He had meant to say something about it but it had been driven from his mind by everything else.

  
  


So it seemed like he wasn't the only person running to find the goodie bag Francis had left behind.

  
  


"Grab a jacket." Hux tells him firmly and he rushes out of the room to comply. He seems a lot more willing to put his faith in Hux now that he'd seen that he could win a fight.

  
  


"Where are we going?" He yells from somewhere deep within the house.

  
  


"To finish this." Hux tells him, or maybe himself, as he leaves the kitchen. He's fairly certain he's smearing blood all over the door frame.

  
  


It doesn't matter. Kylo is a disaster of a man and his house reflects it to the point he wasn't even sure it had been tossed.

  
  


Glenn is standing in the foyer in a jacket, holding a bundle of fabric.

  
  


"What's this?"

  
  


Glenn holds it out to him, it's a dark well worn T-shirt and a soft looking flannel.

  
  


"You're covered in blood... I thought you might want to change..."

  
  


Looking down he can see the stream of blood from his own nose and mouth as well as splatters of that of the thugs. It would definitely feel terrible once it started to dry (hell it felt terrible now).

  
  


"Thank you." He grumbles and pulls off his deputy's shirt and stained undershirt, leaving them uncharacteristically on the floor.

  
  


The shirt and flannel are soft against his battered overheated skin, they smell like Kylo and he's not sure how he feels about that.

  
  


"Where are we going?" Glenn asks again, he must want a real destination then.

  
  


"Take me to the place Francis used to."

  
  


"Jasko's woods? What do you want to go there for?"

  
  


"Francis left a present behind and we need to go collect it."

-

  
  
  
  


They take Glenn's mother's station wagon out to Jasko's woods, unbelievably she keeps her keys in the sunvisor,he hadn't realised he had walked into one a movie... Then again it would explain rather a lot.

  
  


The trees are thin and close together. They weave through the trees lead by the flashlight on Glenn's phone and his memory.

  
  


They walk in dead silence, or rather almost silence, Glenn, a few steps ahead of him keeps making sniffling noises.

  
  


Hux is dutifully ignoring them. Or at least that's the plan before the boy turns around to look at him with a tear stained face, red eyes and laboured breathing.

  
  


"How did you do it?" Glenn asks through a thick throat.

  
  


"Do what? Fight those goons?"

  
  


"No, get over your boyfriend's murder."

  
  


"Murder... Who told you... Ren." Hux rubs his hand over his face, a dull throb of pain from the beating pulls his hand instantly away.

  
  


"Yeah... Ren said that you were younger then me when your boyfriend was murdered... How did you do it? Get over that."

  
  


That was easy enough to answer. He didn't. He never had, he likely never would but he knew he couldn't tell that to the redhead standing just feet away desperate for some sort of hope that things would get better somehow.

  
  


He was sure for Glenn that they would. After all, Francis' blood covered someone else's hands. Hux couldn't say the same.

  
  


On a really bad day he could still see the stains in the creases of his hands.

  
  


"Is that why you became a cop? Do you think that he's proud of you? You know from the beyond, that you're out here in the middle of the night to make sure that no one else gets hurt?"

  
  


Hux was positive that if he had lived Sul would have been appalled at Hux's career as a military 'fixer'. Sul had wanted him to be a painter, said he would support him. Sul had been more a pacifist than anything, smart and small and weak as his father would and had said.

  
  


They would live in a little apartment somewhere, new York or Vienna maybe and Hux would paint and Sul would work as a history professor somewhere.

  
  


It had been the perfect life for a couple of highly intellectual fourteen year olds.

  
  


But none of that needs to be said. It's not what Glenn needs. Glenn needs to know that Francis had not died in vain, that his life had meant something in the grand scheme of things.

  
  


He opens his mouth to let loose a stream of lies appropriate for Glenn but there is something in the way the boy looks that stops him.

  
  


"Sul was a pacifist, he'd hate what I did tonight, what I've done with my life, how I got here in this tiny corrupt town." He looks down at the sticks and leaves littering the ground between them lit up in strange overly blue light from the cell phone, "I'm a cop because it suits my skills, because I've done things in my life that try to overshadow what happened to Sul all those years ago. I'm sorry I'm not some redemption story for you, I'm just a man who's seen too much and thinks too much like a villain to be anything else."

  
  


"Hux... You are not a villain."

  
  


He shakes his head and looks up at the boy, his hair shimmering in the low moonlight twisting through the trees. It looks good. He wished he'd looked that good at his age, Glenn is all soft edges and kindness and it's appealing in a way that he's sure will bring good things to him. Hux at that age had been sharp and hard edges, dangerous eyes and a manipulative mouth.

  
  


"Don't live for Francis, Glenn. I've tried that road before, I've lived for Sul and I've lived for my father and where did it get me? In a forest in the middle of nowhere, in the service of a corrupt department, beaten by a couple of thugs. Live for yourself kid."

  
  


They stand there in silence a moment longer before without a word Glenn continues to lead the way through the trees.

  
  


It's not long after their heart to heart that Glenn breaks the amicable silence.

  
  


"It's just up ahead."

  
  


There's a break in the trees and Glenn breaks through first.

  
  


A wail of noise sparks a frantic worry in Hux and he rushes into the clearing.

  
  


Glenn is on his knees in front of an empty hole, the fresh dirt suggests that whoever had beat them to the duffle bag hadn't been Francis.

  
  


A string of colourful curse words fills the air and he's honestly not sure which one of them it comes from.

  
  


The clearing is drenched in moonlight, a meadow that looks like it would be perfect for picnics if he was the sort. The scene is marred by the gaping hole and the glaring absence of the duffle bag.

  
  


All that's been left for them is a discarded gun and a handful of pictures that look like they may have slipped from the bag.

  
  


Hux watches as Glenn reaches for the gun with hands shaking and pale in the moonlight.

  
  


"Glenn..." Hux sighs and moves with stiff limbs to intercept him. He kneels down and takes the gun easily from the boys hands, "that isn't the way."

  
  


"The wrong Fallen is dead..."

  
  


"Maybe so but you going to jail doesn't help anyone."

  
  


Hux slips the gun into the empty holster at his hip, feeling the solid click of the snap.

  
  


He opens his mouth to say something, something hopefully comforting but the smaller ginger just shakes his head.

  
  


"Please don't tell me that violence never solved anything, please don't tell me about gun violence and misfires and the dangers of turning into a monster. I just. I can't-"

  
  


"I can assure you I wasn't going to say any of those things. Well placed and tactical violence can do wonders."

  
  


Glenn looks up at him with wide wet eyes made ghostly by the pale light of the moon, "Aren't you a pacifist?"

  
  


"No. Whatever gave you that idea." He pushes himself up and extends a hand to the boy.

  
  


"You told me the notebook was your best weapon? You never carry your gun."

  
  


"I only point my gun at things and people I want to die. It's a philosophy that has done me well in combat. I haven't met anyone in Arkanis I wish was dead. Come on let's get out of here. There's no use hanging around."

  
  


"You don't want the mayor dead?" Glenn ask softly as Hux leads the way back through the winding trees towards the car.

  
  


"No. I want to see him punished."

  
  


The drive back to the Curtis household seems so much shorter than it should. They sit in the car for a long moment. Hux looks at the far too colourful complexion of his face in the side mirror.

  
  


"Go inside Glenn, wake up your parents, lock the doors."

  
  


You're not safe here.

  
  


He doesn't say it out loud but thankfully he doesn't seem to have to.

  
  


Glenn nods slowly behind the wheel.

  
  


"I'll come get you when it's over." Hux tells him getting out of the car and walking away. He trusts that Glenn will do what he asks and that Mr. and Mrs. Curtis will be too excited to find there boy alive that they won't question his paranoia.

  
  


He misses that feeling, that warmth and confidence of being in control of having authority. The only warmth he feels now as he walks back to Kylo's to regroup is the heat in his face and hands from his body trying to stitch itself back up.

  
  


 


	14. Blood on the wall

  
  


Kylo had returned victorious.

  
  


While Hux had been ferreting out information from hospital bound reporters he had been doing the real work.

  
  


Not that that was a big surprise really.

  
  


He’d found this mysterious duffle bag, exactly where the force had shone him. He's found Hux’s very mean cat. He had intended to bring her with him to drop into Hux’s lap but she had been a challenge, scratching up his arms, the leather of his interior. Millie was going to be spending the rest of the evening with Phasma and her girlfriend while Hux adored how clever he was.

  
  


He couldn't wait to just drop the duffle bag in front of Hux's face and watch him flounder excited and shower him with praise.

  
  


_Oh Kylo you are so good at this._

  
  


_Oh Kylo I couldn't do this without you._

  
  


_Kylo you are so smart_

  
  


_Kylo you are so attractive._

  
  


_Kylo I want you so badly._

  
  


_Fuck me here._

  
  


_Here Bren?_

  
  


_Yes God, I love when you call me that, right here on the table._

  
  


Kylo found the front door unlocked, his satisfied smirk fell. That wasn't right. Hux should have been back by now and there was no way he would let the house stay unlocked, not with Glenn still hiding out.

  
  


Kylo pushes the front door open slowly, the light of the foyer thrown across the door he notices too late the smear of red brown against the wood.

  
  


"What the fuck..." Kylo's heart is pounding in his chest, a heavy painful drum solo against his ribs as he steps into his house.

  
  


His eyes are drawn to the puddle of white, tan and blood red on the floor.

  
  


He drops the duffle in favour of dropping to the floor and pulling the fabric apart, his fingers digging into the rough texture of the tan deputies uniform.

  
  


A strangled sound rips from his throat at the sight of the blood stiffened shirt, a splatter across the shining pin with Hux engraved on it.

  
  


"Fuck... Fuck fuck fuck." Kylo looks up quickly his body thrumming with dangerous energy. The door of the kitchen is smeared with blood, a trail of drops on the tile, "Hux!" Kylo let's it rip raw from his throat as he pushes away from the clothes and rushes to the kitchen door.

  
  


He hits it with his shoulder too hard, he can hear it crack distantly. The kitchen is a disaster area. Things are knocked over, shattered, broken, smashed against the wall and the floor.

  
  


There are heavy dents in the wall and island cabinets. The table is pushed roughly into the wall, a chair turned over.

  
  


And blood on the floor.

  
  


Blood on the wall, sprayed there and Kylo's mind supplies too many vivid visions of violence. Too many visions of his own fist against people's faces, his knuckles splitting on someone's cheekbone.

  
  


All the memories of his life as Snokes enforcer flashing in front of his eyes as he stared at the blood.

  
  


Poe Dameron's dark hair and olive skin replaced by vivid ginger and porcelain.

  
  


They had taken him.

  
  


The mayor had taken him.

  
  


He wouldn't let that stand.

  
  


A roar rips from his throat and he storms back through the house knocking over everything he can get his hands on in hopes of alleviating the rage misting his vision, fogging up his head.

  
  


He needs a weapon.

  
  


He stoops to grab the duffle on his way to his bedroom. There is a suitcase under his bed filled with sharp things he needs to visit.

  
  


He's halfway up the stairs when the creak of the front door causes him to drop the bag and turn around. Who in their right mind would come back now. When his car was so obviously parked outside, when he, the Demon of Arkanis was home.

  
  


He watches stunned as a flash of bright ginger hair comes into view. Dirty hands push around the door and pull the body of deputy Hux over his threshold.

  
  


Hux pushed the door closed with the weight of his body. Leaning there in silence in Kylo's old T-shirt and flannel looking like he had been through whatever hell had been unleashed in the kitchen.

  
  


Hux takes a shaky breath and looks up at him. His cheeks are cut and bruised, his eye is blackening, his hair a mess but his eyes are ever the same, sharp and with a cold determination.

  
  


His mouth twists unhappily and Kylo launches himself down the stairs.

  
  


He's in front of him before Hux can speak.

  
  


"Where the fuck have you been?" Hux's voice is sharp past a split lip.

  
  


There is a shiver in his hands as they raise to gently touch Hux's face. The man doesn't even flinch.

  
  


"Who did this." Is the low noise that comes out of Kylo's throat as he runs his thumb slowly across Hux's split bottom lip. He's sure it's a nervous habit but Hux's warm pink tongue flicks out to graze across him.

  
  


"I can take care of it." Hux wraps his fingers around Kylo's wrist, he's unreasonably warm but doesn't pull his hand away as his fingers gently stroke the man's abused face.

  
  


"No seriously Bren, who did this." His other hand moves to hold the side of his neck and it feels possessive, and why shouldn't it, why shouldn't he be able to hold Hux like this, he was his, not a soul in town thought otherwise and judging by the way Hux leaned into Kylo's touch, how his free hand had settled on his hip, Hux didn't think any differently.

  
  


"Who do you think?"

  
  


"Fallen won't live to see the sunrise." His voice feels too dark, too deep, like it belongs to the demon that's coiling around his chest and not him.

  
  


He makes to push away from Hux's warmth to make good on his promise but Hux grabs him, fingers hard in his hips, pulling him close. He knows he could break away but the idea of pulling away from Hux's body is just ridiculous. It's where he's wanted to be since he had walked up to the Fontane house, with his stiff backed walk and the sun shimmering in his ginger hair.

  
  


"I will end him for you." He whispers raising a hand to brush red strands away from his face, "You look so good in my clothes." He whispers leaning in close, feeling a thrum of electricity between them. The force vibrating with potential.

  
  


They had so much potential together he knew it. He could feel it. It must have been what had kept the force so off balance when they were together before.

  
  


"You can't tell me that Kylo. It's been a very long day, I don't want to have to bring you into the station for making threats like that."

  
  


"I thought they had taken you... The blood all over the place... I should have been here. I had a vision and I was out in Jask-"

  
  


"Jasko's woods?" Hux pushes him away and moves away from the door his demeanour suddenly urgent and not at all pliant.

  
  


"How do you know about Jasko's woods?"

  
  


"How do _you_?" Hux's pale eyes narrow and it pulls at his injured face causing him to grimace.

  
  


"I live here Hux. I know about the general geography." He doesn't want to argue about this, he doesn't want to argue about anything, he wants to kiss Hux's stupid bruised face, tuck him carefully into his bed with a pack of ice and then go murder Mayor Fallen. Was it really so much to ask?

  
  


"Glenn took me there-"

  
  


"Where is he anyway?"

  
  


"With his parents. The duffle bag Francis left with the incriminating evidence against his father was gone. The mayor's thugs must have beaten us to it."

  
  


"You were looking for the duffle bag?"

  
  


"Of course I was. But it's gone and I need to rethink my strategy-" Kylo leans against the stair railing, the duffle bag flopped over behind him as he watched Hux pace a little, running hands with ripped knuckles through his loose red hair.

  
  


"Hux."

  
  


"-but it's not exactly easy. If they already have the bag, and who knows when they got the bag, they could have burnt everything by-"

  
  


"Hux."

  
  


"- and I can't go to Snoke with this. Not when he explicitly told me not to pursue this. I've gone against a direct order-"

  
  


"Hux!"

  
  


"- the only ally I have here is you and a seventeen year old and I'm honestly not sure which of you is worse-"

  
  


"God damn it Hux!"

  
  


The redhead turns sharply to him as if he hopes that miraculously Kylo holds the key.

  
  


Lucky for him that he does but if he's learned anything from watching Hux work it's to not show his hand.

  
  


"When did you last sleep?"

  
  


"I don't know... Tuesday maybe?"

  
  


"Hux that was days ago. Go to bed."

  
  


"You want me to leave?" Hux looks at the front door, "When I'm so close? I'll sleep when this is over."

  
  


He's suddenly very worried that this is standard procedure for Hux, just worrying himself into insomnia.

  
  


Taking a careful breath he moves to the man and takes him by the wrist and leads him through the house, locking and barring the kitchen door.

  
  


Hux is grumbling behind him, he seems to be working out some sort of plan for the morning, letting himself be dragged up the back stairs and up into Kylo's bedroom.

  
  


"This is your bedroom."

  
  


"Good catch."

  
  


"I'm not sleeping in your bed."

  
  


"Why not you're already wearing my favourite shirt."

  
  


It hadn't been his favourite until he had seen Hux in it honestly.

  
  


Kylo puts his hands on the shorter man's shoulders and pushes him down onto the edge of the bed.

  
  


"I'm not sleeping with you."

  
  


"Not yet, no." Kylo throws him a smirk and enjoys the roll of the man's eyes a little too much he's sure.

  
  


"I can't sleep for long Kylo, I need to gather more evidence against the mayor."

  
  


"Why? We know he did it."

  
  


"Shadow of a doubt is an easy thing to accomplish if we don't get all the evidence we can. All they will need is a good lawyer and I imagine he must have the best lawyer in town in his employ."

  
  


"He's no Atticus but I see your point. Just lay down, I'll get some ice."

  
  


He disappears quickly before Hux can say otherwise, he takes the duffle bag from its place discarded on the front stairs and stuffs it in the tiny space under the stairs and pulls the front table back in front of the tiny door. These old houses were full of hiding places. He doesn't want to know what's in the duffle bag, doesn’t want to know how deeply he may actually be involved in any of this, how tied up Snoke is.

  
  


One thing at a time and there would be plenty of time in the morning after he had buried Fallen in the hole he had left in the woods.

  
  


When he returns to his bedroom with the pack of ice Hux is asleep on top of the covers.

  
  


With a sigh that's too affectionate he pushes some pillows around the man so that he can place the ice pack without worry that it will fall too far from his face if he shifts.

  
  


Hux looks ethereal, other worldly, his red hair a glow in the ancient bulb of his bedside table, the flutter of his eyelashes across bruised cheekbones, the patron saint of brawling. Kylo leans carefully over his sleeping form and contemplates just pressing his lips carefully against Hux's but it's cheating.

  
  


He doesn't want a kiss stolen from Hux, he wants them given freely and he's sure that that is what he will get as soon as he returns victorious.

  
  


With Fallen in the ground, his thugs run out of town, Glenn returned to the safety of this normally boring town Hux will throw hinself at him.

  
  


He can wait for that, an easy recalculation and he presses a tender kiss to Bren's forehead.

  
  


 


	15. Gunpoint

 

  
  


A cold dull ache in his cheek pulls him away from the deep heavy blanket of sleep he's been so easily neglecting.

  
  


He wakes up, not wrapped in Kylo Ren's arms, the man urging a carnal end to the heat between them, but completely alone.

  
  


Utterly.

  
  


There's a feeling of betrayal creeping up from his gut as he pushes himself and strains to hear Kylo rummaging around in another room.

  
  


Nothing.

  
  


Still.

  
  


It takes his sleep fogged brain a moment too long to recognise what's happened. There is a chest pulled out of an open closet, it's lid left open and he's afraid to get up and look at what horrors it has to offer.

  
  


His legs are too heavy, they feel like someone has attached heavy sacks to his body in place of his legs while he had slept. He makes it too the trunk and curses because it becomes far far too obvious where exactly Ren has gone.

  
  


The trunk has a shelf with a dangerous set of knives inset into it. There is one empty spot.

  
  


It's a big one.

  
  


"Shit."

  
  


He pushes away from the closet and rushes out of the house not bothering to lock anything behind him, he had more important things to worry about then some poor soul thinking Kylo Ren's house was the correct house to try a burgle.

  
  


He pushes himself down the street toward where he tries to remember the mayor's house is supposed to be.

  
  


The stiffness in his side is daunting but the idea of what ridiculous murderous nonsense Kylo might get into makes him push through. The tone Kylo had taken when he had told him that Fallen wouldn't see the sunrise had been terrifying (electric, burning, amazing) and he didn't for a second doubt the man with no past.

  
  


So much of him had wanted to just forget everything else and fall into Kylo's cool hands, find some respite in his strong arms and push away the mess of this town until he was ready to deal with it (which was possibly never). Defeated, beaten in so many ways.

  
  


Hux had been with a handful of men in his life. Attractive, strong, powerful, clever men who doted on him, that wanted to protect him, from his father, from the world, from work. There had been men that had said they would kill for him but he had never believed them before.

  
  


He believed Kylo and there was something dangerously attractive about it. That he would have to deal with after he stopped Kylo.

  
  


Pushing himself deeper into the tangle of streets the town had the audacity to call a neighbourhood he takes inventory of himself.

  
  


He still has his baton, still clicked into his belt and possibly a little bloody, he had the abandoned gun from Jasko's, which he knew he wasn’t likely to use ( he had it more so, so no one else would)

  
  


He hadn't shot a gun since he had last seen active combat, since he had been on tour all those years ago. The weight of the gun in his belt felt foreign but he pushed on listing to himself the street names he knew, the names he would call Ren when he found him.

  
  


"Hux!"

  
  


He stops dead on the sidewalk and looks up to find Glenn standing in his open front door.

  
  


"What are you doing out here? Get back inside."

  
  


Glenn instead walks down the sidewalk towards him. Hux moves to meet him.

  
  


"Where are you going?"

  
  


"The mayor's house. I don't have time-"

  
  


"You’re going the wrong way deputy." Mr. Curtis tells him from behind his son, "The Fallen place is at the end of Oleander. It's not far from here. Do you want a ride?" He offers but he can't bare the thought of waiting, he needs to get to Kylo right away. He had taken that stupid car of his. He was there already, he was possibly already a murderer.

  
  


He couldn't think about that right now.

  
  


"No, it's that way? Oleander?" He confirms and when Mr. Curtis starts to nod Hux takes off again, this time in the right direction.

  
  


-

  
  


The mayor's house looks like it belongs in a John Hughes movie, or alternately like it was build on an Indian burial ground.

  
  


It sits ominously, nestled between blood red flowerbeds and white picket fences.

  
  


The large double doors are hanging wide open and Hux rushes up the cracked pathway repeating a mantra of _Don't be too late, don't be too late, don't be too late._

  
  


He rushes into the house yelling, "Kylo! Kylo!"

  
  


"In here deputy." The mayor's voice calls out from deeper into the house and with a hummingbird's heart he follows the trail of Ren induced damage.

  
  


In a trashed study Kylo Ren is standing with his back towards the wall and his hands up, staring at the mayor standing at the other side of the room staring in turn at them both with wide wild eyes (the eyes of a trapped animal), the man looks like he's shaking but the barrel of the gun he has aimed at Ren's chest is painfully still.

  
  


He carefully steps up to stand beside Ren, "Fallen, put the gun down, it's not too late for you."

  
  


It was.

  
  


"It is." Kylo snaps at the unstable man with venom.

  
  


"It isn't. I have friends in the justice department, we can work this out but if you kill one of us, if you kill Ren," he has to pause the grind of his teeth as he forces those words out is painful to his tender jaw, "if you kill me you will never see the light of day."

  
  


"We aren't some scared seventeen year old boy Fallen, we aren't going to just disappear like all your other problems." Kylo tells him, baiting, which is beyond irresponsible, he is untrained and unarmed, the knife he had brought he can see is sticking up out of the hard wood of the desk the Mayor is using as a sort of shield.

  
  


"Stop it Ren."

  
  


"No. It's true. You can't shoot me Fallen, just put the gun down and beat me to death like you did to Franny. I saw the crime scene photos mayor. I saw the battered, broken body of your son-"

  
  


"It wasn't like that."

  
  


"What? He didn't like who you wanted him to like, didn't love the right people so you couldn't stand it, was he an affront to God?"

  
  


"Kylo please let me handle this." He hisses because whatever Kylo thinks he's doing is so obviously doing the opposite of any good.

  
  


The mayor is unraveling but not in anyway that leans to a situation with zero shots fired.

  
  


He's calculating the trajectory of the bullet the Mayor might shoot as Kylo continues to needle the man. It seems he's finally learned that sometimes there was just no arguing with Ren no matter how much he wanted to.

  
  


"That wasn't what happened! It wasn't about that!"

  
  


"No, of course not. It's so much worse than that isn't it. He asked you to meet him out in that park bathroom with money. If you gave him the money then you could have all the information he was going to give to Poe."

  
  


"He was blackmailing me! My own son!"

  
  


The gun shifts in the man's hand and Hux recalculates how much force he’ll have to put into the shove if the gun goes off to get them both out of the line of fire.

  
  


"You got into one of your famous fights but this time it didn't end with the two of you walking away. This time you hit him."

  
  


Kylo's eyes are dark and unfocused, he's swaying a little bit.

  
  


"And you hit him." His voice gets that strange far off quality to it again. Now is absolutely the worst time he can think of to have an episode, "And hit him, he begged you to stop, told you you could have the information, just let him go, just let him leave with Glenn. You'd never have to see him again. He wouldn't tell anyone about anything, _oh god please, please stop!_ You hit him until his pleas became painful gurgles of noise, until the last choked plea. And you hit him a few more times after he was-"

  
  


Kylo's words disappear into the sound of a gunshot.

  
  


Hux's entire world become painfully slow as he barrels into Ren knocking them both to the floor.

  
  


It's second nature, he's sure of it, but before the mayor can think about lining up his next shot Hux pulls the gun out of his holster and lines up an easy shot from this angle and squeezes the cold metal trigger.

  
  


The mayor drops like a stone and Hux let's himself fall backwards, half on the floor, half on Kylo. He has no intention of moving for the foreseeable future.

  
  


"You shot him."

  
  


"After he shot at you."

  
  


"Mmm. I didn't think you carried your gun around?"

  
  


"I don't, it was someone else's gun... Oh god I have so much paperwork to do because of that."

  
  


"And you know, the whole killing him thing."

  
  


Hux makes a vague wave in the air with a lazy hand, "I plan on reaping the benefits of a corrupt system."

  
  


"I’ll call Phasma for-" he falls asleep exhausted before he can find our exactly why he is going to call Phasma.

  
  


-

  
  


When he wakes up this time he is in Ren's bed again. He isn't alone though. This time, Kylo is asleep beside of him, peaceful, beautiful, silent.

  
  


Except he isn't.

  
  


An odd purring sound is coming from the man.

  
  


He prods the man positive that he has another medical condition to add to the growing list of things that are probably wrong with Ren.

  
  


"Ren? Ren?"

  
  


"What?" He barely moves just angling himself towards him and away from the pillow.

  
  


"You're purring."

  
  


"What?"

  
  


"You. Are making a purring noise."

  
  


"No I'm not."

  
  


"Yes, I can hear it."

  
  


Kylo makes an amused noise in the back of his throat, "look beside me idiot."

  
  


With narrowed eyes and a hand on Kylo's wild hair hoping to snag it at he moves (Judging by the yeowl of noise he succeeds) he pushes himself up to look at the bed on the other side of the man.

  
  


There is an orange ball of fur curled on the bed beside Ren's legs.

  
  


"Millie!" Hux shouts and the cat looks up at him. She has the decency to climb sharply over Ren's body to rest a little unhappily in Hux's tight embrace, "Oh my God I was so sick with worry Millie. Where did you find her."

  
  


Kylo seems to give up on sleep and rolls over onto his back to look up at him, "I found her when I broke into the Fallen house this afternoon."

  
  


“This afternoon? And you didn’t think to tell me?” He looks down at Millie, pushing his face into her soft fur, “Were you here the whole time Millie?”

  
  


“No, I had Phasma keep her for the night, she went to your apartment to get cat food.” Hux cringed at the thought of his apartment.

  
  


"Oh God, the apartment... It's a mess."

  
  


Kylo pushed himself up onto his elbows to look at him properly, "Yeah, you can't stay there."

  
  


"Your right." He sighs heavily and sinks into the bed, Millie curling up happily between them like this was her bed now, "Are there any hotels that will allow Millie?" He is tired, too tired to start making new plans already. He has so many things to do still.

  
  


"Yea, don't worry I've already moved a bunch of your stuff for you." Kylo tells him sinking back into the bed himself, there's a strange ache in Hux's chest that he can't help but wonder about.

  
  


He's not actually upset that Kylo is trying to get rid of him so quickly is he?

  
  


"Oh... Should I go?"

  
  


"Where?"

  
  


"The hotel?"

  
  


Kylo let's out a single laugh and turns towards Hux, the man throws an arm over his chest whining a little at the fact that Millie won't move.

  
  


"What's so funny?"

  
  


"You are already there." Kylo tells him arching around the feline buffer to nuzzle against the crook of Hux's neck, his long dark hair tickles his skin.

  
  


"Kylo I can't."

  
  


"Nonsense, best turn on service in town."

  
  


"That's turn down Kylo."

  
  


"I'm pretty sure its turn on service Bren."

  
  


Kylo's hands slide across his body, still confined in Kylo's favourite shirt and his lips brush against his neck. Hux is too tired or too pleased with the situation to correct the use of the affectionate use of his nickname.

  
  


He knows that if anyone asks he'll blame the sleep deprivation but he turns into Kylo's embrace ignoring the flashing red light on his phone.

  
  


Whatever it is is infinitely less important than what he's doing now.


End file.
